Abstract
3D‐Printing with the well‐established ‘Fused Deposition Modeling’ technology was used to print totally gas‐tight reaction vessels, combined with printed cuvettes, inside the inert‐gas atmosphere of a glovebox. During pauses of the print, the reaction flasks out of acrylonitrile butadiene styrene were filled with various reactants. After the basic test reactions to proof the oxygen tightness and investigations of the influence of printing within an inert‐gas atmosphere, scope and limitations of the method are presented by syntheses of new compounds with highly reactive reagents, such as trimethylaluminium, and reaction monitoring via UV/VIS, IR, and NMR spectroscopy. The applicable temperature range, the choice of solvents, the reaction times, and the analytical methods have been investigated in detail. A set of reaction flasks is presented, which allow routine inert‐gas syntheses and combined spectroscopy without modifications of the glovebox, the 3D‐printer, or the spectrometers. Overall, this demonstrates the potential of 3D‐printed reaction cuvettes to become a complementary standard method in inert‐gas chemistry.
Highlights
3D-Printing has found its way into daily life and evolved from more experimental and specialized setups towards the mass market and is used for efficient production setups
The C=O band of the acrylates would block a significant region of the IR spectrum and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS)-N was the choice for IR cuvettes, too
The glass transition temperature (Tg) of printed stripes of both polymers was determined via differential scanning calorimetry to 98 °C (ABS-K) and 111 °C (ABS-N) and the temperature range for heating up the printed reaction vessels is limited to roughly 100 °C
Summary
3D-Printing has found its way into daily life and evolved from more experimental and specialized setups towards the mass market and is used for efficient production setups. Besides spectacular demonstrations of 3D-printing (ranging from food to concrete), the main impact of 3D-printers on our daily life probably is their rapidly increasing dissemination (beginning with the availability in market stores up to the use in small-scale productions) nowadays [1][2]. Printers based on ‘Fused Deposition Modeling’ (FDM), which is realized by building up the desired objects layer by layer of molten polymer, have arisen as most cost-efficient and fast technology. They are available in the price range around $1000. A combination of PP and silicones was used to print ‘reaction cubes’ in which multistep reactions were realized by overturning the appropriate sides of the cube to mix the desired starting materials step-by-step, while catalysts were embedded into the silicon matrix [10]
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