May 3, 2017 | By Julia
We’ve all heard the saying, “that’s why pencils have erasers,” but what if the same could be said for 3D printing? Beyond questions of making mistakes, principles of alteration, modification, and customization are essential to the world of manufacturing prototypes. Up until now, however, there’s never been a streamlined way to put these principles into practice. Altering an existing print has meant going back to the drawing board, and starting a new print from scratch. But that could all be about to change.
Researchers at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT) in southwestern Germany have developed an erasable 3D printing ink. The innovation focuses specifically on direct laser writing: a type of additive manufacturing that produces micrometer-sizes structures with precisely defined properties. According to KIT developers, small structures of up to 100 nanometres (with one nanometer corresponding to one millionth of a meter) can now be erased and rewritten repeatedly.
3D printed microstructures can be written, erased, and re-written repeatedly
“Developing an ink that can be erased again was one of the big challenges in direct laser writing," says Professor Christopher Barner-Kowollik of KIT's Institute for Chemical Technology and Polymer Chemistry.
For those unfamiliar with direct laser writing, the process essentially revolves around a computer-controlled, highly focused laser beam that generates a structure in a photoresist (a light sensitive material). Now, KIT scientists have developed an “ink” with reversible bonding, meaning that the material’s building blocks can be separated from each other. By immersing the printed structure into a chemical solvent, the material is erased, allowing a new structure to be written. Erasure is not limited to single use either; using the KIT method means that a structure can now be modified repeatedly.
The ground-breaking research has been developed closely with the KIT Institute of Applied Physics and the Institute of Nanotechnology, headed by Professor Martin Wegener. After months of development, the collaborative teams developed specialized 3D printers able to produce scaffolds up to 100 nm in size by direct laser writing with their new ink.
“Ink with defined breaking points can be used for a variety of applications,” says doctoral student and lead researcher Markus Zieger. The development is expected to be especially valuable in the fields of biology and materials science, where it can open up untold new possibilities. Structures written in the new erasable ink could be integrated into structures made with non-erasable 3D printing ink.
For now, KIT researchers have been testing their new innovation in biology labs. Specifically with the development of 3D designer petri dishes, cell cultures can be grown in three dimensions on the laboratory scale. Parts of the 3D microscaffold can then be removed again, in order to study how cells react to environmental changes, explains Wegener.
According to the KIT team, future applications could include producing reversible wire bonds from erasable conducting structures. A printed material could be made more or less porous, for example, by mixing a permanent ink with a non-permanent ink. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, Barner-Kowollik and Wegener say, who predict that 10 percent of all goods will be produced by 3D printing within 15 years.
The research was published in a recent issue of German academic journal Angewandte Chemie, in a scientific paper titled "Cleaving Direct Laser Written Microstructures on Demand." Reviewers have already rated the publication a “very important paper.” How its applications play out in the future, and to what ends, should be groundbreaking to say the least.
Posted in 3D Printing Materials
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