Scientists develop eco-friendly 4D-printable polymers that can change shape when exposed to different stimuli.
Now scientists have developed fully bioderived, 4-D printable polymers that can be shaped into objects that change shape under mechanical stress or when they are heated or exposed to light or electrical current, and then return to their original shape on demand.
Sustainable Alternative to Petroleum-Based Materials
The shape memory polymer (SMP) was developed using plant-based raw materials such as rapeseed oil and isobornyl acrylate, as described in the journal Small Science.
“These biobased polymers possess well-defined shape recovery capacities, which can be over 99%,” researchers who used vat photopolymerization, a 3D printing method, said.
The resulting polymers have a the tunable activation temperature range of 32–76 °C and are capable of being tailored to a variety of mechanical properties with tensile strengths from 2.3 to 12.5 MPa.
In demonstrations, researchers created spiral structures that showed different response times when exposed to heat. A softer spiral returned to its original shape in just 10 seconds, while more rigid versions required additional heating time due to their chemical composition.
The team also successfully triggered shape changes using light, with a 90-mm printed bar recovering its programmed shape in approximately 10 minutes.
Applications in Medical Devices and Robotics
Through the addition of carbon nanotubes into the polymer blends, researchers impar titanium in which the materials could be driven by electric fields through localized Joule heating.
The wide range of programmability and dynamic shape changes of these green materials render them a potential candidate for use in medical devices, soft robotics, and adaptive surface engineering applications.
Contrary to earlier bio‐based SMPs, these new polymers can potentially be processed with 4D printing and other reliable procedures and still offer multi‐stimuli responsiveness, thus overcoming one of the main challenges for industrial processing.
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Future research will focus on developing degradation and recycling strategies to address limitations of the crosslinked polymer structure.
