TY - JOUR
T1 - Fast 3D printing of fine, continuous, and soft fibers via embedded solvent exchange
AU - Eom, Wonsik
AU - Hossain, Mohammad Tanver
AU - Parasramka, Vidush
AU - Kim, Jeongmin
AU - Siu, Ryan W.Y.
AU - Sanders, Kate A.
AU - Piorkowski, Dakota
AU - Lowe, Andrew
AU - Koh, Hyun Gi
AU - De Volder, Michael F.L.
AU - Fudge, Douglas S.
AU - Ewoldt, Randy H.
AU - Tawfick, Sameh H.
N1 - This work was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), under contract no. N660012124036. (W.E., M.T.H., V.P., R.W.Y.S., D.P., A.L., D.S.F., R.H.E., S.H.T.)\u00A0S.T. acknowledges support from the Beaufort Visiting Fellowship in St. John's College, University of Cambridge.
This work was sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), under contract no. N660012124036. (W.E., M.T.H., V.P., R.W.Y.S., D.P., A.L., D.S.F., R.H.E., S.H.T.) S.T. acknowledges support from the Beaufort Visiting Fellowship in St. John's College, University of Cambridge.
PY - 2025/1/20
Y1 - 2025/1/20
N2 - Nature uses fibrous structures for sensing and structural functions as observed in hairs, whiskers, stereocilia, spider silks, and hagfish slime thread skeins. Here, we demonstrate multi-nozzle printing of 3D hair arrays having freeform trajectories at a very high rate, with fiber diameters as fine as 1.5 µm, continuous lengths reaching tens of centimeters, and a wide range of materials with elastic moduli from 5 MPa to 3500 MPa. This is achieved via 3D printing by rapid solvent exchange in high yield stress micro granular gel, leading to radial solidification of the extruded polymer filament at a rate of 2.33 μm/s. This process extrudes filaments at 5 mm/s, which is 500,000 times faster than meniscus printing owing to the rapid solidification which prevents capillarity-induced fiber breakage. This study demonstrates the potential of 3D printing by rapid solvent exchange as a fast and scalable process for replicating natural fibrous structures for use in biomimetic functions.
AB - Nature uses fibrous structures for sensing and structural functions as observed in hairs, whiskers, stereocilia, spider silks, and hagfish slime thread skeins. Here, we demonstrate multi-nozzle printing of 3D hair arrays having freeform trajectories at a very high rate, with fiber diameters as fine as 1.5 µm, continuous lengths reaching tens of centimeters, and a wide range of materials with elastic moduli from 5 MPa to 3500 MPa. This is achieved via 3D printing by rapid solvent exchange in high yield stress micro granular gel, leading to radial solidification of the extruded polymer filament at a rate of 2.33 μm/s. This process extrudes filaments at 5 mm/s, which is 500,000 times faster than meniscus printing owing to the rapid solidification which prevents capillarity-induced fiber breakage. This study demonstrates the potential of 3D printing by rapid solvent exchange as a fast and scalable process for replicating natural fibrous structures for use in biomimetic functions.
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U2 - 10.1038/s41467-025-55972-1
DO - 10.1038/s41467-025-55972-1
M3 - Article
C2 - 39833187
AN - SCOPUS:85216439071
SN - 2041-1723
VL - 16
JO - Nature communications
JF - Nature communications
IS - 1
M1 - 842
ER -