1. 3D printing of highly stretchable hydrogel with diverse UV curable polymers
- Author
-
Jianxiang Cheng, Zhe Chen, Ji Liu, Xiangnan He, Qi Ge, Biao Zhang, Yuan-Fang Zhang, Honggeng Li, Shaoxing Qu, Shlomo Magdassi, and Chao Yuan
- Subjects
chemistry.chemical_classification ,Multidisciplinary ,Materials science ,business.industry ,Materials Science ,SciAdv r-articles ,Nanoparticle ,3D printing ,Nanotechnology ,Polymer ,Flexible electronics ,chemistry.chemical_compound ,Silicone ,Applied Sciences and Engineering ,chemistry ,Polymerization ,Self-healing hydrogels ,business ,Photoinitiator ,Research Articles ,Research Article - Abstract
This article proposes an approach of 3D printing structures consisting of stretchable hydrogels bonded with UV curable polymers., Hydrogel-polymer hybrids have been widely used for various applications such as biomedical devices and flexible electronics. However, the current technologies constrain the geometries of hydrogel-polymer hybrid to laminates consisting of hydrogel with silicone rubbers. This greatly limits functionality and performance of hydrogel-polymer–based devices and machines. Here, we report a simple yet versatile multimaterial 3D printing approach to fabricate complex hybrid 3D structures consisting of highly stretchable and high–water content acrylamide-PEGDA (AP) hydrogels covalently bonded with diverse UV curable polymers. The hybrid structures are printed on a self-built DLP-based multimaterial 3D printer. We realize covalent bonding between AP hydrogel and other polymers through incomplete polymerization of AP hydrogel initiated by the water-soluble photoinitiator TPO nanoparticles. We demonstrate a few applications taking advantage of this approach. The proposed approach paves a new way to realize multifunctional soft devices and machines by bonding hydrogel with other polymers in 3D forms.
- Published
- 2019