Surface-modification of printed objects
AssigneeThe University of Western Ontario
InventorsJun Yang, Xiaolong Wang, Xiaobing Cai, Qiuquan Guo
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Abstract
Three dimensional printed objects having surface coatings, such as a hydrophobic coating or metalized surface, 3D printed substrates having an outer surface that can be tuned by application of such a coating, and methods for the fabrication of such objects and substrates are described. A surface initiator is incorporated into the 3D substrate during layer-by-layer printing, and the surface coated by surface-initiated atom transfer radical polymerization (SI-ATRP).
Claims13
A method of printing a three-dimensional object having a surface coating by three-dimensional printing, the method comprising:
- (i) providing a three-dimensional printable liquid resin, the three-dimensional printable resin including a mixture of first and second molecules and a photoinitiator, programming a 3D printer to produce a digital 3D model of the object to be printed and digitally slicing the 3D model into a series of 2D layers, depositing the mixture layer-by-layer using said 3D printer and copolymerizing the first and second molecules in each layer using patterns of said 2D layers to control UV projection onto each layer to solidify the liquid resin in a layer-by-layer sequence until the object has been produced, wherein the first molecule is a cross-linking first monomer and the second molecule is a second monomer comprising first and second functional groups wherein the first functional group links with the first monomer during the copolymerization to form a three-dimensional object, the outer surface of the three-dimensional object being formed with the second functional group exposed at the outer surface of said three-dimensional object for chemical reaction with a third molecule.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.