A facile one step route that introduces functionality to polymer powders for laser sintering.
basic_science · Level V
Where this comes from
- Record sourced from PubMed, PMID 38605004.
- Also identified by DOI 10.1038/s41467-024-47376-4 and PMC identifier 11009337.
- Licence recorded as CC BY.
- The licence permits redistribution, so the abstract is shown in full and the full text is available from the publisher.
Abstract
Laser Sintering (LS) is a type of Additive Manufacturing (AM) exploiting laser processing of polymeric particles to produce 3D objects. Because of its ease of processability and thermo-physical properties, polyamide-12 (PA-12) represents ~95% of the polymeric materials used in LS. This constrains the functionality of the items produced, including limited available colours. Moreover, PA-12 objects tend to biofoul in wet environments. Therefore, a key challenge is to develop an inexpensive route to introduce desirable functionality to PA-12. We report a facile, clean, and scalable approach to modification of PA-12, exploiting supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO<sub>2</sub>) and free radical polymerizations to yield functionalised PA-12 materials. These can be easily printed using commercial apparatus. We demonstrate the potential by creating coloured PA-12 materials and show that the same approach can be utilized to create anti-biofouling objects. Our approach to functionalise materials could open significant new applications for AM.