3D Printing Cellulose Hydrogels Using LASER Induced Thermal Gelation

Type of content
Journal Article
Thesis discipline
Degree name
Publisher
MDPI AG
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Language
English
Date
2018
Authors
Huber T
Clucas DM
Vilmay M
Pupkes B
Stuart J
Dimartino S
Fee C
Abstract

A 3D printer was developed for the 3D printing of cellulose hydrogels using open source software and simple 3D printer hardware. Using a temperature-based sol-gel transition of cellulose dissolved in aqueous solutions of sodium hydroxide (NaOH) and urea, a three-dimensional gel can be created by moving a focused laser beam across a bath of the cellulose solution and lowering the print stage after every layer. A line width of 100–150 µm and layer thickness of 25 µm of the printed part could be achieved. No delamination between printed layers occurred and no additional support material was needed to create free hanging structures due to suspending the printed part in printing liquid. By adding cellulose powder to the solution, the gelation temperature, the gel strength and stiffness can be manipulated while maintaining a high internal porosity of the gel. A laser power of 100 mW was found to produce the highest quality print with an accurate representation of the previously designed part. Lower power settings (80 mW) produced insufficient gelation and as a result reduced print accuracy while higher power settings (120 mW) caused the gel to burn

Description
Citation
Huber T, Clucas DM, Vilmay M, Pupkes B, Stuart J, Dimartino S, Fee C (2018). 3D Printing Cellulose Hydrogels Using LASER Induced Thermal Gelation. Journal of Manufacturing and Materials Processing. 2(3).
Keywords
3D printing, cellulose, hydrogel, laser
Ngā upoko tukutuku/Māori subject headings
ANZSRC fields of research
Field of Research::09 - Engineering::0910 - Manufacturing Engineering
Rights
© 2018 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).