Location
Toomey Hall, Room 140
Presentation Date
April 22, 2023, 12:00pm - 1:10pm
Session
Session 6e
Description
Microgels are soft granular particles consisting of highly swollen polymeric networks. At relatively low polymer concentrations, these granular particles undergo a jamming-like transition and behave like a soft elastic solid under low applied stresses but will flow like a fluid when the applied stress exceeds the yield strength. This transition from solid-like to fluid-like behavior has led to their application as rheological modifiers for many cosmetic products. Recently, packs of aqueous microgel have been utilized as a sacrificial support bath for embedded 3D-printing of soft materials, including polymers, hydrogels, colloidal particles, and fluid phases. Here, the printing nozzle locally yields the microgel support material and the printed phase is deposited in its wake; once the printing nozzle has left the printing area, the microgels rapidly and spontaneously resolidify, trapping the printed phase in space. However, interfacial instabilities arising from immiscibility between the printed phase and the microgel support bath have hindered the printing of organic based materials. Microgel particles that selectively swell in organic phases would limit the interfacial instabilities between phases and enable the 3D-printing of PDMS structures. Here, we present our preliminary results in synthesizing PDMS-based microgel particles through batch emulsion polymerization with control over the rheological properties for organic based 3D-printing applications. We explore the effect of surfactant concentration on particle size and the scalability of synthesis to produce the volumes necessary for embedded 3D-printing.
Meeting Name
32nd Annual Spring Meeting of the NASA-Mo Space Grant Consortium
Document Type
Presentation
Document Version
Final Version
File Type
text
Language(s)
English
Rights
© 2023 The Authors, all rights reserved.
Exploring New Methods for the Synthetization of PDMS Based Microgels
Toomey Hall, Room 140
Microgels are soft granular particles consisting of highly swollen polymeric networks. At relatively low polymer concentrations, these granular particles undergo a jamming-like transition and behave like a soft elastic solid under low applied stresses but will flow like a fluid when the applied stress exceeds the yield strength. This transition from solid-like to fluid-like behavior has led to their application as rheological modifiers for many cosmetic products. Recently, packs of aqueous microgel have been utilized as a sacrificial support bath for embedded 3D-printing of soft materials, including polymers, hydrogels, colloidal particles, and fluid phases. Here, the printing nozzle locally yields the microgel support material and the printed phase is deposited in its wake; once the printing nozzle has left the printing area, the microgels rapidly and spontaneously resolidify, trapping the printed phase in space. However, interfacial instabilities arising from immiscibility between the printed phase and the microgel support bath have hindered the printing of organic based materials. Microgel particles that selectively swell in organic phases would limit the interfacial instabilities between phases and enable the 3D-printing of PDMS structures. Here, we present our preliminary results in synthesizing PDMS-based microgel particles through batch emulsion polymerization with control over the rheological properties for organic based 3D-printing applications. We explore the effect of surfactant concentration on particle size and the scalability of synthesis to produce the volumes necessary for embedded 3D-printing.
