Monday 16 July 2018 10:00 – 11:00 Seminar room 1
“3D PRINTING OF RESPONSIVE HYDROGELS AND IONOGELS”
Professor Emmanuel P. Giannelis Department of Materials Science and Engineering Cornell University USA
Abstract
Despite extensive progress to engineer hydrogels for a broad range of technologies, practical applications have remained elusive due to their (until recently) poor mechanical properties and lack of fabrication approaches, which constrain active structures to simple geometries. Stereolithography, SLA, has demonstrated extreme promise because of its ability to selectively create a desired structure layer-by-layer out of a liquid pre-gel solution under exposure to patterned light. As such SLA is an attractive manufacturing technique for rapid prototyping and the fabrication of customizable items like biomedical implants or scaffolds. In this presentation, I will review our efforts to develop ionic polymer nanocomposite systems and then focus on our more recent work on systems adaptable to 3D printing. These new nanocomposite hydrogels and ionogels combine within a single platform tunable stiffness, toughness, extensibility, and resiliency. In addition to their excellent mechanical performance, they exhibit fast printing, conductivity, and fast osmotically-driven actuation. The tunable properties combined with the ability for 3D-printing into complex architectures, provide opportunities for a variety of practical applications such as artificial tissue, soft actuators, compliant conductors, and sensors for soft robotics.