The use of 3D printing for rapid tooling and manufacturing has promised to produce components with complex geometries according to computer designs. Due to the intrinsically limited mechanical properties and functionalities of printed pure polymer parts, there is a critical need to develop printable polymer composites with high performance. 3D printing offers many advantages in the fabrication of composites, including high precision, cost effective and customized geometry. This article gives an overview on 3D printing techniques of polymer composite materials and the properties and performance of 3D printed composite parts as well as their potential applications in the fields of biomedical, electronics and aerospace engineering. Common 3D printing techniques such as fused deposition modeling, selective laser sintering, inkjet 3D printing, stereolithography, and 3D plotting are introduced. The formation methodology and the performance of particle-, fiber- and nanomaterial-reinforced polymer composites are emphasized. Finally, important limitations are identified to motivate the future research of 3D printing.

3D printing of polymer matrix composites: A review and prospective

Fundamentals and applications of 3D printing for novel materials

A review on additive manufacturing of polymer-fiber composites

Additive manufacturing (AM), commonly known as three-dimensional (3D) printing or rapid prototyping, has been introduced since the late 1980s. Although a considerable amount of progress has been made in this field, there is still a lot of research work to be done in order to overcome the various challenges remained. Recently, one of the actively researched areas lies in the additive manufacturing of smart materials and structures. Smart materials are those materials that have the ability to change their shape or properties under the influence of external stimuli. With the introduction of smart materials, the AM-fabricated components are able to alter their shape or properties over time (the 4th dimension) as a response to the applied external stimuli. Hence, this gives rise to a new term called ‘4D printing’ to include the structural reconfiguration over time. In this paper, recent major progresses in 4D printing are reviewed, including 3D printing of enhanced smart nanocomposites, shape memory al...

3D printing of smart materials: A review on recent progresses in 4D printing

The functional maturation and preservation of hepatic cells derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) are essential to personalized in vitro drug screening and disease study. Major liver functions are tightly linked to the 3D assembly of hepatocytes, with the supporting cell types from both endodermal and mesodermal origins in a hexagonal lobule unit. Although there are many reports on functional 2D cell differentiation, few studies have demonstrated the in vitro maturation of hiPSC-derived hepatic progenitor cells (hiPSC-HPCs) in a 3D environment that depicts the physiologically relevant cell combination and microarchitecture. The application of rapid, digital 3D bioprinting to tissue engineering has allowed 3D patterning of multiple cell types in a predefined biomimetic manner. Here we present a 3D hydrogel-based triculture model that embeds hiPSC-HPCs with human umbilical vein endothelial cells and adipose-derived stem cells in a microscale hexagonal architecture. In comparison with 2D monolayer culture and a 3D HPC-only model, our 3D triculture model shows both phenotypic and functional enhancements in the hiPSC-HPCs over weeks of in vitro culture. Specifically, we find improved morphological organization, higher liver-specific gene expression levels, increased metabolic product secretion, and enhanced cytochrome P450 induction. The application of bioprinting technology in tissue engineering enables the development of a 3D biomimetic liver model that recapitulates the native liver module architecture and could be used for various applications such as early drug screening and disease modeling.

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Deterministically patterned biomimetic human iPSC-derived hepatic model via rapid 3D bioprinting

Here we demonstrate that efficient piezoelectric nanoparticle–polymer composite materials can be optically printed into three-dimensional (3D) microstructures using digital projection printing. Piezoelectric polymers were fabricated by incorporating barium titanate (BaTiO3, BTO) nanoparticles into photoliable polymer solutions such as polyethylene glycol diacrylate and exposing to digital optical masks that could be dynamically altered to generate user-defined 3D microstructures. To enhance the mechanical-to-electrical conversion efficiency of the composites, the BTO nanoparticles were chemically modified with acrylate surface groups, which formed direct covalent linkages with the polymer matrix under light exposure. The composites with a 10% mass loading of the chemically modified BTO nanoparticles showed piezoelectric coefficients (d33) of ∼40 pC/N, which were over 10 times larger than composites synthesized with unmodified BTO nanoparticles and over 2 times larger than composites containing unmodified ...

Chase Aaronson

Papers

3D optical printing of piezoelectric nanoparticle-polymer composite materials.