3D Printing for High Performance Polymers and Nanocomposites

There is high interest in the use of 3D printing to create objects from polymeric nanocomposite materials. It has appended the design functionality of polymeric materials enabling wide uses and rapid scale development in new and demanding applications. Other materials based on metallic, ceramic, hydrogels and other non-metallic do not have as wide a range of properties leading to new structure-composition-property relationships. Polymers can be classified into thermoplastics, thermosets, and elastomers based on their thermo-mechanical properties. However, it is not as simple as the classification into two groups when it comes to the use of pre, real-time, and post processing and curing when the transition to a final phase or cross-linked structure results in new properties. However, each class of polymers when paired with a corresponding nanomaterial can become a class of its own. This is also more evident with the choices of 3D printing methodologies (FDM, SLA, SLS, VSP) which can make use of blended or formulated compositions. By incorporating nanomaterials with 3D printing it allows the design of new and toughened materials and applications based on nanostructuring and integrating the chemistry of conversion with the printing mode. In this talk, we demonstrate the design principles and fabrication of higher performance and toughened 3D printed materials based on the use of nanomaterials and their nanostructuring. Other work based on the use of SLA, SLS, FDM, towards high strength nanocomposite materials and their applications will be discussed. 4D Printing will be demonstrated based on stimuli-responsive properties to be observed including supercompressibility and shape-memory properties.