The last decade has seen a remarkable increase in the development of lithography based additive manufacturing techniques for the processing of polymeric materials. Compared to other 3D printing methods these light-based techniques offer several advantages including higher writing speed and better resolutions. However, state-of-the-art UV curable resins are limited to (meth)acrylate based monomers and their resulting polymeric networks. One considerable drawback of these (meth)acrylate building blocks is their comparably low polymer toughness in the cured state, which drastically limits their applicability. This behavior can be attributed to the evolution of shrinkage stress during the fast radical chain growth polymerization and the formation of an inhomogeneous polymeric network structure.<br/>In this contribution, the versatility of the thiol-yne photo-click reaction for the fabrication of photopolymers with unique thermo-mechanical properties is shown. This polymerization reaction yield highly homogeneous network structures that exhibit a sharp and defined thermal glass transition greatly above room temperature together with outstanding polymer toughness. Additionally, the photopolymerization of the investigated thiol-yne resins results in a higher monomer conversion compared to the homo polymerization of (meth)acrylates. This fact makes this monomer system interesting for the 3D printing of biocompatible structures. The herein described monomer system paves the way towards the fabrication of tough photopolymers for demanding applications by means of stereolithography.

Low-cytotoxic thiol/yne formulations for the 3D printing of tailor made medical devices

2019 Spring National Meeting

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