Thiol-ene-acrylate Ternary Photosensitive Resins for DLP 3D Printing

Abstract

Acrylate-based photosensitive resins for digital light processing (DLP) 3D printing generally suffer from large volumetric shrinkage, insufficient functionality conversion and heterogeneous networks. Based on thiol-ene click chemistry, we developed a series of thiol-ene-acrylate ternary formulations and systematically studied the effects of each composition on the photopolymerization kinetics and thermomechanical properties. The ternary systems exhibit very low viscosity (< 0.15 Pa·s) and sufficient thermal storage stability. The mechanical properties of the networks can be adjusted by simply altering the components ratio. With optimal parameters, the thiol-ene-acrylate ternary system can be applied to DLP 3D printing to fabricate delicate objects.