3D printing of highly stretchable hydrogel with diverse UV curable polymers

Qi Ge; Zhe Chen; Jianxiang Cheng; Biao Zhang; Yuan-Fang Zhang; Honggeng Li; Xiangnan He; Chao Yuan; Ji Liu; Shlomo Magdassi; Shaoxing Qu

doi:10.1126/sciadv.aba4261

3D printing of highly stretchable hydrogel with diverse UV curable polymers

Sci Adv. 2021 Jan 6;7(2):eaba4261. doi: 10.1126/sciadv.aba4261. Print 2021 Jan.

Authors

Qi Ge¹, Zhe Chen², Jianxiang Cheng³, Biao Zhang⁴, Yuan-Fang Zhang⁵, Honggeng Li^{5

6}, Xiangnan He³, Chao Yuan⁵, Ji Liu³, Shlomo Magdassi⁷, Shaoxing Qu⁸

Affiliations

¹ Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China. geq@sustech.edu.cn iambzhang@nwpu.edu.cn squ@zju.edu.cn.
² State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power and Mechatronic System, Key Laboratory of Soft Machines and Smart Devices of Zhejiang Province, Department of Engineering Mechanics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China.
³ Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen 518055, China.
⁴ Xi'an Institute of Flexible Electronics and Xi'an Key Laboratory of Biomedical Materials and Engineering, Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU), Xi'an 710072, Shaanxi, China. geq@sustech.edu.cn iambzhang@nwpu.edu.cn squ@zju.edu.cn.
⁵ Digital Manufacturing and Design Center, Singapore University of Technology and Design, Singapore 487372, Singapore.
⁶ State Key Laboratory of Advanced Design and Manufacturing for Vehicle Body, Hunan University, Changsha 410082, China.
⁷ Casali Center for Applied Chemistry, Institute of Chemistry, The Center for Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem 9190401, Israel.
⁸ State Key Laboratory of Fluid Power and Mechatronic System, Key Laboratory of Soft Machines and Smart Devices of Zhejiang Province, Department of Engineering Mechanics, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China. geq@sustech.edu.cn iambzhang@nwpu.edu.cn squ@zju.edu.cn.

Abstract

Hydrogel-polymer hybrids have been widely used for various applications such as biomedical devices and flexible electronics. However, the current technologies constrain the geometries of hydrogel-polymer hybrid to laminates consisting of hydrogel with silicone rubbers. This greatly limits functionality and performance of hydrogel-polymer-based devices and machines. Here, we report a simple yet versatile multimaterial 3D printing approach to fabricate complex hybrid 3D structures consisting of highly stretchable and high-water content acrylamide-PEGDA (AP) hydrogels covalently bonded with diverse UV curable polymers. The hybrid structures are printed on a self-built DLP-based multimaterial 3D printer. We realize covalent bonding between AP hydrogel and other polymers through incomplete polymerization of AP hydrogel initiated by the water-soluble photoinitiator TPO nanoparticles. We demonstrate a few applications taking advantage of this approach. The proposed approach paves a new way to realize multifunctional soft devices and machines by bonding hydrogel with other polymers in 3D forms.

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