3D printing allows for moldless fabrication of continuous fiber composites with high design freedom and low manufacturing cost per part, which makes it particularly well-suited for rapid prototyping and composite product development. Compared to thermal-curable resins, UV-curable resins enable the 3D printing of composites with high fiber content and faster manufacturing speeds. However, the printed composites exhibit low mechanical strength and weak interfacial bonding for high-performance engineering applications. In addition, they are typically not reprocessable or repairable; if they could be, it would dramatically benefit the rapid prototyping of composite products with improved durability, reliability, cost savings, and streamlined workflow. In this study, we demonstrate that the recently emerged two-stage UV-curable resin is an ideal material candidate to tackle these grand challenges in 3D printing of thermoset composites with continuous carbon fiber. The resin consists primarily of acrylate monomers and crosslinkers with exchangeable covalent bonds. During the printing process, composite filaments containing up to 30.9% carbon fiber can be rapidly deposited and solidified through UV irradiation. After printing, the printed composites are subjected to post-heating. Their mechanical stiffness, strength, and inter-filament bonding are significantly enhanced due to the bond exchange reactions within the thermoset matrix. Furthermore, the utilization of the two-stage curable resin enables the repair, reshaping, and recycling of 3D printed thermosetting composites. This study represents the first detailed study to explore the benefits of using two-stage UV curable resins for composite printing. The fundamental understanding could potentially be extended to other types of two-stage curable resins with different molecular mechanisms.
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Editorial for the Special Issue on Discontinuous Fiber Composites
The papers published in this special edition of the Journal of Composites Science will give the polymer engineer and scientist insight into what the existing challenges are in the discontinuous fiber composites field, and how these challenges are being addressed by the research community. [...]
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- Award ID(s):
- 1633967
- NSF-PAR ID:
- 10121135
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Composites Science
- Volume:
- 2
- Issue:
- 4
- ISSN:
- 2504-477X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 63
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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Carbon dots (CDs) have received extensive attention in the last decade for their excellent optical, chemical and biological properties. In recent years, CD composites have also received significant attention due to their ability to improve the intrinsic properties and expand the application scope of CDs. In this article, the synthesis processes of four types of CD composites (metal–CD, nonmetallic inorganics–CD, and organics–CD as well as multi-components—CD composites) are systematically summarized first. Then the recent advancements in the bioapplications (bioimaging, drug delivery and biosensing) of these composites are also highlighted and discussed. Last, the current challenges and future trends of CD composites in biomedical fields are discussed.more » « less
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null (Ed.)Current in situ piezoresistive damage detection techniques for fiberglass-reinforced composites are limited in widespread application as they require complex processing techniques which inhibit the scalability of the methods. To eradicate such challenges and expand the use of piezoresistive monitoring of fiberglass composites, this work utilizes a simple, scalable process to coat electrically insulating commercial fiberglass prepreg with piezoresistive laser induced graphene (LIG) for the detection and localization of damage. Recently, LIG has attracted substantial research attention due to the simplicity of the methodology and the piezoresistance of the LIG. Here, the LIG is transfer printed onto commercial fiberglass prepreg which is subsequently used to localize damage in all three dimensions of the resultant fiberglass-reinforced composites while also maintaining the structural properties of the composites. A combination of in situ and ex-situ resistance measurements are used to accomplish this objective: First, in situ measurements are used to determine the relative location of damage in one-dimension under tensile loading. Subsequently, separate in situ measurements are used to locate damage through the thickness under flexural loading. Finally, ex-situ methods are used to calculate the two-dimensional location of a hole in a plate. The LIG is found to reliably and accurately localize the damage to the composite in each case thus demonstrating for the first time that transfer printed LIG enables self-sensing of damage location in fiberglass composites. The result of this work is thus a multifunctional material capable of locating damage in all three-dimensions which is notably fabricated using commercial materials and scalable methodology.more » « less
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Abstract Multiphase mixtures containing both liquid metal and solid inclusions in a soft polymeric matrix can exhibit unique combinations of mechanical, electrical, magnetic, and thermal properties. Gallium‐based liquid metals have excellent electrical and thermal properties, and incorporating additional conductive, magnetic, or other solid fillers into liquid metal‐embedded elastomers can yield heightened electrical and thermal conductivities, enhanced elasticity due to lowered percolation thresholds, and positive piezoconductivity. This emerging class of liquid metal + x composites, where x denotes any solid filler type, has applications in stretchable electronics, wearables, soft robotics, and energy harvesting and storage. In this review, the recent literature is consolidated on liquid metal + x composites and their potential to offer uniquely amplified or multiplied bulk properties is highlighted. The literature related to the materials and processing of liquid metal + x composites is reviewed, through which it is found that the properties of the resulting multiphase composites are sensitive to the sequence in which the distinct liquid metal and solid inclusions are incorporated into the continuous phase. This review further includes a summary of relevant predictive modeling approaches, as well as identifies grand challenges and opportunities to advance liquid metal + x composites.
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Thermoset polymers and fiber-reinforced polymer composites possess the chemical, physical, and mechanical properties necessary for energy-efficient vehicles and structures, but their energy-inefficient manufacturing and the lack of end-of-life management strategies render these materials unsustainable. Here, we demonstrate end-of-life deconstruction and upcycling of high-performance poly(dicyclopentadiene) (pDCPD) thermosets with a concurrent reduction in the energy demand for curing via frontal copolymerization. Triggered material deconstruction is achieved through cleavage of cyclic silyl ethers and acetals incorporated into pDCPD thermosets. Both solution-state and bulk experiments reveal that seven- and eight-membered cyclic silyl ethers and eight-membered cyclic acetals are incorporated efficiently with norbornene-derived monomers, permitting deconstruction at low comonomer loadings. Frontal copolymerization of DCPD with these tailored cleavable comonomers enables energy-efficient manufacturing of sustainable, high-performance thermosets with glass transition temperatures of >100 °C and elastic moduli of >1 GPa. The polymers are fully deconstructed, yielding hydroxyl-terminated oligomers that are upcycled to polyurethane-containing thermosets having a higher glass transition temperatures than that of the original polymer upon reaction with diisocyanates. This approach is extended to frontally polymerized fiber-reinforced composites, where large-fiber volume fraction composites (Vf = 65%) containing a cleavable comonomer are deconstructed and the reclaimed fibers are used to regenerate composites via frontal polymerization that display properties nearly identical to those of the original. This work demonstrates that the use of cleavable monomers, in combination with frontal manufacturing, provides a promising strategy to address sustainability challenges for high-performance materials at multiple stages of their lifecycle.more » « less
- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.3390/jcs2040063
