engleski

Polymer materials for 3D printing of microreactors

Additive manufacturing (AM), also referred to as 3D printing technology, is a term for all technologies that build 3D objects by adding layer-upon-layer of material. Additive manufacturing is being used to fabricate molds, prototypes and functional parts with complicated geometry. Depending on the technology, materials used for the production of an object can be in powder, liquid or solid form. The most commonly used are polymeric materials (ABS – acrylonitrile/butadiene/styrene, PLA – polylactide, PET – poly(ethylene terephthalate), etc.), but also, less frequently metals and their alloys, ceramics and composite materials are used. Microreactors are reaction systems fabricated in microscopic scale by using, at least partially, methods of microtechnology and precision engineering. The selection of materials for microreactor manufacturing greatly depends on the desired application and on several of the parameters: the type of reaction that is carried out, chemical compatibility with solvents and reagents, the type of microreactor, the mechanical requirements of the microreactor, price, availability on the market, ease of production, etc. The aim of this work was to investigate commercial polymeric materials in order to replace glass materials in microreactor production. In this paper the effects of solvents (water, ethanol and acetone) on materials used in the fused deposition modeling (FDM) additive manufacturing technique were investigated. Effect of solvent was tested by using swelling tests to see which material is suitable for microreactor production. Materials were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and also, mechanical properties of all the materials were tested. This work has been supported by Croatian Science Foundation under the project entitled "Development of materials for 3D printing of microreactors" (UIP-2014-09-3154).

Polymers, 3D printing, microreactors

nije evidentirano