3D printing has advanced greatly with regards to producing highly elaborate and delicate structures revealing superior mechanical strength and dimensional stability in a high throughput manner. The overall mechanical properties of printed materials, particularly high performance polymeric materials, are highly dependent on the morphological characteristics generated during the whole 3D printing process. For semi-crystalline polymers, the printing parameters directly impact key morphological aspects such as crystallization kinetics, crystal orientation, crystallinity, and phase-separated (or self-assembled) morphological features. For this study, we perform <i>in-situ</i> synchrotron small- and wide-angle X-ray scatterings on a semi-crystalline engineering thermoplastic to monitor the evolution of morphological features in real time. Since the degree of supercooling, polymer-substrate interface, and polymer-air interface are considered as key parameters inevitably involved in the 3D printing process, we attempted to correlate their roles to the resulting morphological characteristics as well as the resulting quality of the printed material that is evaluated in terms of mechanical properties.

<i>In-situ</i> synchrotron X-ray scattering studies on morphological evolution of semi-crystalline polymer during 3D printing process

ACS Spring 2022

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In-situ synchrotron X-ray scattering studies on morphological evolution of semi-crystalline polymer during 3D printing process