RAFT-Mediated 3D Printing of “Living” Materials with Tailored Hierarchical Porosity AITranslate

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DOI：https://doi.org/10.1021/acsapm.2c00500

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Applications of reversible addition–fragmentation chain-transfer (RAFT) polymerization in three-dimensional (3D) printing have recently expanded the scope of light-based 3D printing technologies through manufacturing “living” 3D materials. In this study, we report RAFT-mediated, computer-controlled layer-by-layer 3D printing of scaffolds with tailored hierarchical porosities and highly resolved micro- and macroscale features. Our system offers precise control over the internal and external architectures of porous materials, including pore size, which is not attainable using conventional manufacturing techniques where the achievable complexity of the fabricated scaffolds is limited. RAFT-mediated 3D printing supports a variety of structural designs and enables manufacturing open-porous materials with a controlled variation of porosity (e.g., ranging from 23 to 70% porosity). The RAFT-based formulation also allowed precise manufacturing of the original computer-aided design (CAD) 3D models, which were designed using MATLAB and/or SolidWorks, showing well-defined features throughout the continuous macroscale architecture. As an application example, materials with triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) structures were designed and 3D-printed using a digital light processing (DLP) 3D printer. An additional advantage of these RAFT-based 3D materials is that they show “living” character and so can be modified and patterned in a post-manufacturing step through reactivation of the dormant network-bound RAFT functionalities. This research further broadens the scope of RAFT-driven 3D printing that may have implications in molecular separation, catalysis, energy storage, tissue engineering, and drug delivery.