Recently, a team of scientists from the US Department of Energy's Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory designed a 3D printing method that can produce a completely liquid structure. The technology uses a special 3D printer to deposit "waterlines" into a silicone oil substrate that can be used to build liquid electronics and chemical synthesis.
It is well known that 3D printing not only builds a multi-vase by depositing a layer of molten plastic. As scientists at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory have shown, the technology can even extend to printed structures made entirely of liquids.
That is, by printing water lines into the silicone oil material, they have demonstrated the ability to 3D print liquid tube structures in another liquid. In the research phase, scientists have printed water lines between 10 microns and 1 mm in diameter and created many different types of structures, including complex spirals and branched patterns up to several meters long.
As Tom Russell, a research scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and a researcher at the technology, explains, 3D printing liquid structures can even change their shape and adapt to the surrounding environment.
“This is a new material that can be reconfigured and can be customized into liquid reaction vessels for many applications, from chemical synthesis to ion transport to catalysis,†he said.
Russell worked with Joe Forth, a postdoctoral fellow in materials science, and many other scientists to implement the project. At the same time, it believes that liquid 3D printing technology can be used for liquid electronic devices (flexible, stretchable devices) as well as chemical synthesis.
For the latter, the scientists explained that print tubes can be "chemically tuned" and molecules flow through them, which can provide a new and innovative way to separate molecules or provide "nano-scale building blocks" to compounds.
In order to make liquids print into liquids without becoming liquid, scientists must come up with innovative solutions. One of them is to apply a printed water pipe with a special soapy substance. More specifically, water pipes are coated in the nanoparticle-derived surfactant such that they retain their shape and prevent them from dispersing into droplets.
The so-called "nanoparticle supercapsules" are made by adding gold nanoparticles to water and adding the polymer ligand to the oil. When the two liquids are in contact, the gold nanoparticles and the polymer ligands attempt to adhere to each other, but the oil and water remain separated.
When the water substance is deposited into the oil base, the ligand in the oil adheres to the individual nanoparticles in the water, eventually forming a nanoparticle ultrafiltration layer. The result is a glassy stabilizing layer between the oil and water that holds the waterline in place.
"This stability means we can stretch the water into a tube and it's still a tube," Russell added. "Or we can shape the water into an ellipsoid, and it's still an ellipsoid. We've used these nanoparticle supercapsules to print water pipes that last for months."
To automate the new liquid printing process, researchers have modified off-the-shelf 3D printers by installing syringe pumps and liquid extrusion needles. The 3D printer is then specifically programmed to insert the needle into the oil base and inject water in a mode determined by the 3D model.
“We can squeeze the liquid out of the needle and place any water we want in three dimensions,†explains Forth. “We can also balance the material with external force, which instantly destroys the stability of the supercapsule and changes the shape of the waterline. These structures are infinitely reconfigurable.â€
It is reported that innovative 3D printing research is funded by the Ministry of Energy Science Office. The findings have recently been published in the journal Advanced Materials.
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