Single-Step Fabrication and Programming of Shape-Memory Polymers

采用智能材料的制造技术有可能通过创造能够执行当前任何方法都无法实现的动态功能的设备，在航空航天、生物医药、能源和医疗保健等不同领域重振美国制造业。对智能材料的设计和制备以及材料加工对其性能和功能的影响的理解差距导致了有限的制造范式。这项工作调查的基础科学的程序温度诱导应变和形状记忆聚合物加热后的形状变化的相互作用。一种被称为“通过打印编程”的工艺将使使用3D打印机的单个智能材料，而不是复合材料，单步制造具有均匀或空间变化功能的全3D、固体或多孔设备成为可能。这项研究不仅有潜力通过提高对智能材料制造的基本理解来促进科学的进步，而且还将通过广泛影响使用智能材料的许多领域来促进国家的健康、繁荣和福利。理解的提高将为复杂智能材料设备的制造带来新的应用领域。多学科方法和综合科学与工程教育活动将有助于扩大代表性不足的群体对研究的参与，使所开发的技术民主化并促进其传播。该研究将使用集成的跨学科实验和模拟，以深入了解形状记忆聚合物在3D打印中的应用的先进制造原理。在打印过程中，在3D形状记忆聚合物中编程的应变可以定量地理解，预测和控制，以创建当前无法实现的复杂形状和功能。本研究将：研究和调整打印过程中形状记忆的编程；模型形状记忆的决定因素，从合成到打印，以理解，预测和控制功能；设计、表征和研究概念验证的形状记忆聚合物器件，这些器件只能在通过打印编程时制备。这些贡献是重要的，因为它们有望为3D打印形状记忆聚合物的设计、开发和修改提供新的基本制造理解，同时通过研究通过打印编程的方法和发现新的制造现象，广泛地实现形状记忆聚合物在3D打印中的未来应用，这些现象只能在形状记忆通过打印编程时进行研究或应用。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

Manufacturing technologies that employ smart materials have the potential to revitalize American manufacturing in diverse areas, such as aerospace, biomedicine, energy, and healthcare, through creation of devices that can perform dynamic functions that cannot be achieved by any current approach. Gaps in understanding of the design and preparation of smart materials and the effects of materials processing on their properties and functionality has led to limited fabrication paradigms. This work investigates the fundamental science underlying the interaction of programmed temperature-induced strains and the changes in shape upon heating of shape memory polymers. A process termed Programming-via-Printing will enable single-step fabrication of fully 3D, solid or porous devices with uniform or spatially varying functionality from individual, rather than composite, smart materials using 3D printers. This research has the potential not only to promote the progress of science through improved fundamental understanding of manufacturing of smart materials but will advance the national health, prosperity, and welfare by broadly impacting the many fields using smart materials. Improved understanding will bring the manufacturing of complex smart material devices to new application areas. The multi-disciplinary approach and integrated science and engineering education activities will help broaden participation of underrepresented groups in research and democratize and facilitate spread of the technology developed.The research will use integrated, interdisciplinary experimentation and simulation to contribute in-depth understanding of advanced manufacturing principles for application of shape-memory polymers in 3D printing. Strains programmed in 3D shape-memory polymers during printing can be quantitatively understood, predicted, and controlled to create complex shapes and functions not currently achieved. The research will: study and tune programming of shape-memory during printing; model determinants of shape-memory from synthesis through printing to understand, predict, and control function; and design, characterize, and study in proof-of-concept shape-memory polymer devices that can only be prepared when programmed via printing. These contributions are significant, because they are expected to provide new fundamental manufacturing understanding of the design, development, and modification of shape-memory polymers for 3D printing while also broadly enabling future applications of shape-memory polymers in 3D printing through study of the Programming-via-Printing approach and discovery of new manufacturing phenomena that can only be studied or applied when shape-memory is programmed via printing.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.