Engineering news
Now, researchers at Dartmouth College believe they can take that even further, with smart ink that allows 3D-printed objects to change shape and colour after they’ve been printed.
The development in the field of ‘form-changing intelligent printing,’ also known as 4D-printing, could provide a low-cost alternative for industries such as biomedicine and energy.
“This technique gives life to 3D-printed objects,” said Chenfeng Ke, an assistant professor of chemistry at Dartmouth. “While many 3D-printed structures are just shapes that don't reflect the molecular properties of the material, these inks bring functional molecules to the 3D printing world. We can now print smart objects for a variety of uses.”
While most 3D-printed materials are hardened during the production process, the new method creates a printed design programmed to transform itself. “This is something we've never seen before. Not only can we 3D-print objects, we can tell the molecules in those objects to rearrange themselves at a level that is viewable by the naked eye after printing. This development could unleash the great potential for the development of smart materials," Ke said.
For example, researchers were able to create objects that could be made to change colour in response to an external stimulus. They also created objects that could be shrunk down to 1% of their original size, with 10 times the resolution.
This could allow cheap printers to do the work of more expensive ones, by printing large objects and then shrinking them down. According to a study published in the journal of the German Chemical Society, the smart ink can print at 300-micron resolution, but the end product would have a line width of just 30 microns.
In future, the researchers believe it could be used to produce high resolution bone replacements, or to deliver medicine. “This process can use a $1000 printer to print what used to require a $100,000 printer,” said Ke. “This technique is scalable, widely adaptable and can dramatically reduce costs.”