Abstract
Herein, a new polymeric resin for stereolithography (SLA) three-dimensional printing (SLA-3DP) is reported. An ultraviolet (UV) or visible (VIS) light source is critical for SLA printing technology. UV light can be used to manufacture 3D objects in SLA-3DP, but there are significant occupational safety and health issues (particularly for eyes). These issues prevent the widespread use of SLA-3DP at home or in the office. Through the use of VIS light, the safety and health issues can largely be solved, but only non-transparent 3D objects can be manufactured, which prevents the application of 3DP to the production of various common transparent consumer products. For these reasons, we developed a VIS light-curable yet visibly transparent resin for SLA-3DP, which also retains UV curability. The key was to identify the photoinitiator diphenyl(2,4,6-trimethylbenzoyl)phosphine oxide (DPTBP). DPTBP was originally designed as a UV photoinitiator, but we found that VIS light irradiation is sufficient to split DPTBP and generate radicals due to its slight VIS light absorption up to 420 nm. The cured resin displays high transparency and beautiful transparent colors by incorporating various dyes; additionally, its mechanical properties are superior to those of commercial resins (Arario 410) and photoinitiators (Irgacure 2959).
Highlights
The additive manufacturing technique commonly known as three-dimensional printing (3DP) produces solid objects from reagent materials for various applications[1], such as consumer products, patient-specific medical/dental devices, and microfluidic devices[2,3,4,5]
As mentioned in the introduction, the use of VIS light for SLA printing is advantageous over UV sources due to regulations related to occupational health and safety issues
VIS light exposure does not cause—or negligibly causes—tissue damage, and SLA 3D printing machines equipped with a VIS light source are free of regulation for occupational workers and general consumers
Summary
The additive manufacturing technique commonly known as three-dimensional printing (3DP) produces solid objects from reagent materials for various applications[1], such as consumer products, patient-specific medical/dental devices, and microfluidic devices[2,3,4,5]. SLA printing is popular because of its time efficiency, high resolution, and easy accessibility; various polymeric resins, including acrylates and urethanes, have been used to make microstructures, hydrogels, biodegradable bone ingrowth scaffolds, mandibular reconstructions, etc[15,16,17,18]. Objects exhibiting both optical transparency and mechanical hardness have been a challenging problem in SLA-3DP. Constructs exhibiting superior optical transparency use poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) acrylates or their related acrylate resins[19] These have very soft mechanical properties, limiting their applications to tissue engineering, cell culture, or drug delivery. Polymer resins that provide objects with both transparency and strong mechanical properties after printing with
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