4D printing new additive manufacturing technologies: VOXWRITE
Industry 4.0: towards transformative objects
From 3D printing to 4D printing: introduction
Project VOXWRITE (Direct Voxel Writing Based on Microfluidics Multi-Material 4D printing) aims to develop cutting-edge technology in additive manufacturing that can print multi-material 4D materials.
Developed in the 1980s, conventional additive manufacturing technologies (commonly known as 3D printing) revolutionized the field by providing great freedom to design and fabricate original devices with high added value.
In the past ten years, the technology evolved towards the fabrication of meta materials (objects composed of materials with different physical and mechanical properties) that can react to external stimuli (e.g., temperature, current, light, pH …) and shapeshift accordingly. With this time-dependent transformation ability, 3D printing has become 4D printing. Such materials showcased a positive impact in diverse fields such as medicine, biomedical devices, automotive or space.
As of now, research in 4D printing has focused mostly on demonstrating and characterizing the primitive functions of shape-changing materials (bending, twisting, reversibility …, etc.). A focus on their integration in a device to easily build complex materials is now key to enabling the full potential of additive manufacturing technologies.
4D printing voxel deposition using microfluidics: project description
The principle of project VOXWRITE relies on hacking the object to be printed by additive manufacturing into voxels. A voxel is an elementary volume of material constituting a 3D object, similar to how a pixel is the elementary constituent of a picture.
To create a metamaterial by 3D printing, various strategies can be employed to determine the distribution of these materials inside the desired structure: multilayers, gradient composition, patterned, and computed distributions. While filament-based technologies only address the first distributions, using droplet-based voxels allows the creation of more complex materials using any kind of distribution for additive manufacturing.
VOXWRITE envisions developing innovative microfluidic-based additive manufacturing technologies that can deposit polymerizable microdroplets encapsulating multiple materials with variable spatial resolutions.
This project unites the expertise of project members in France and Switzerland. It is coordinated by the Université de Technologie de Belfort Montbéliard (FR), with the participation of the Microfluidics Innovation Center (FR) and of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne (CH).
As a project partner in VOXWRITE, the MIC develops instruments for generating resin droplets by means of sequential injection of liquids, with the droplets serving as voxels. The aim is to produce droplets with different properties for the printing process.
Results from this project
In addition, the MIC developed a flow splitter instrument.
Funding
The project VOXWRITE has been funded by the ANR (Agence Nationale de la Recherche, project number ANR-23-CE10-0018-02) and the SNF (Schweizerischer Nationalfonds) in the framework of the AAPG2023 PRCI.
Start date: 1 January 2024
End date: 30 Juin 2027
