Pu Hao, Guo Yuhao, Cheng Zhicheng, Chen Zhuoxi, Xiong Jing, Zhu Xiaoyang, Huang Jigang
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Sichuan University, Chengdu 610065, China.
Advance Research Institute, Chengdu University, Chengdu 610106, China.
Polymers (Basel). 2023 Nov 14;15(22):4402. doi: 10.3390/polym15224402.
A stereolithography process with thermal assistance is proposed in this work to address the tradeoff between the flowability and the high concentration of solute loadings at room temperature, through which the improved performance of polymers prepared using stereolithography 3D printing can be achieved. For the experiment, polyethylene glycol diacrylate (PEGDA) with a high molecular weight of 4000 is adopted to improve the mechanical properties of 2-Hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA). For the polymer of HEMA, the highest soluble concentration of PEGDA is about 20 wt% at 25 °C (room temperature) while the concentration could be raised up to 40 wt% as the temperature increases to 60 °C. The 3D printing tests showed that the objects could be easily fabricated with the HEMA polymer loaded with 40 wt% of PEGDA through the thermally assisted projection stereolithography technology. By adding the 40 wt% of PEGDA, the Young's modulus has been enhanced by nearly 390% compared to the HEMA resin without solute, of which the Young's modulus is 63.31 ± 2.72 MPa. The results of the cell proliferation test proved that the HEMA resin loaded with PEGDA led to a better biocompatibility compared to the HEMA resin without the loading of the PEGDA solute. All of the results demonstrate that the polymer loaded with high solute is feasible to be precisely 3D-printed using the projection stereolithography process with thermal assistance, and the improved mechanical properties are beneficial for biomedical applications.
本文提出了一种具有热辅助的立体光刻工艺，以解决室温下流动性与高溶质负载浓度之间的权衡问题，通过该工艺可以实现使用立体光刻3D打印制备的聚合物性能的提升。在实验中，采用高分子量为4000的聚乙二醇二丙烯酸酯（PEGDA）来改善甲基丙烯酸羟乙酯（HEMA）的机械性能。对于HEMA聚合物，在25℃（室温）下PEGDA的最高可溶浓度约为20 wt%，而当温度升至60℃时，该浓度可提高至40 wt%。3D打印测试表明，通过热辅助投影立体光刻技术，可以轻松地用负载40 wt% PEGDA的HEMA聚合物制造物体。添加40 wt%的PEGDA后，与不含溶质的HEMA树脂相比，杨氏模量提高了近390%，不含溶质的HEMA树脂的杨氏模量为63.31±2.72 MPa。细胞增殖测试结果证明，与未负载PEGDA溶质的HEMA树脂相比，负载PEGDA的HEMA树脂具有更好的生物相容性。所有结果表明，负载高溶质的聚合物通过热辅助投影立体光刻工艺进行精确3D打印是可行的，并且改善的机械性能有利于生物医学应用。
