3D printing has emerged in the past decade as a powerful tool for both chemists and engineers alike. In our work, we used photopolymerization techniques to 3D print reactors for the purpose of catalysis. Porous materials such as ionic liquids, mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs), and metal organic frameworks (MOFs) can be synthesized with various surfactants and photoinitators to give porous polymers when irradiated.  Certain ionic liquids are capable of interacting with surfactant micelles to form porous aggregates. Polymers formed from these liquids provided a surface area high enough to have binding sites for chemical reactions (catalysis) to occur. MSNs and MOFs, however, are already porous materials with high surface areas that we then reacted with a series of monomers in attempts to optimize a shape similar to that of the ionic liquid polymer under white light.  The precision that photopolymerization offers, along with the versatility of materials available to print with, makes it an optimal method for 3D printing a variety of chemical reactors.

3D printing of porous materials for catalytic applications

251st National Meeting (2016)

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