Volumetric Additive Manufacturing of Composites via Hydrogel Infusion

Sammanfattning

Volumetric additive manufacturing(VAM)is an emerging technique that boasts improved prototyping speeds, surface finish and materials isotropies. However, as VAM requires highly transparent photoresins, the fabrication of particle-filled composites remains highly challenging due to light scattering and absorption induced by embedded fillers. In this work, we circumvent the transparency limitation by synthesizing fillers in situ post-fabrication, thereby enabling the fabrication of composites via VAM. To demonstrate the versatility and utility of our approach, we converted Xolography-printed hydrogels into magnetic and conductive composites with filler loadings of up to 65 wt %. Furthermore, we implement that the filler growth can be spatially controlled, which enables the fabrication of multimaterial structures. This thesis work provides a facile strategy for the VAM of functional composites and multimaterial structures, which could open opportunities for the fabrication of previously impossible devices and smart materials.