The excellent thermal stability, chemical resistance, insulating behavior and thermomechanical performance of aromatic polyimides enables their wide application in the fields of aerospace and microelectronics. However, inherent repeat unit rigidity and interactions induce processing limitations, restricting many fully-aromatic polyimides, specifically PMDA-ODA or Kapton®, to a 2D form factor. Recently, tandem research efforts from the DREAMS and Long labs enabled additive manufacturing of PMDA-ODA precursor organogels using vat photopolymerization (VP). Thermal treatments of the green-bodys produced from VP and DIW to 400 °C permitted removal of sacrificial crosslinking scaffolds and formation of complex polyimide structures. Nevertheless, current strategies utilized high molecular weight polymers during additive manufacturing, requiring inclusion of high weight percent of solvent in order to obtain suitable solution rheology and reactivity. The high loading of solvent yields large volumetric shrinkage during post processing and wrapping of part geometries. Herein, synthetically facile photo-active polyimide salt precursors have been investigated for reducing solvent loading and improving processability of polyimides via additive manufacturing, while maintaining high mechanical performance through development of high molecular weight during post processing of printed green-bodies.

Design of photo-active polyimide supramolecular salt precursors for additive manufacturing

ACS Spring Meeting 2021

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.