New Technology: Bloom from the 3-D printers – Tagesspiegel

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Researchers have created objects that change shape when water is added occurs.

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As of himself be flowers at sunrise. This natural self-organization rendered American scientists are now on complex structures that they made quick and easy with a 3-D printer. In the journal “Nature Materials” they show how arbitrary objects are printed with a sophisticated blend of soft plastics and harder cellulose fibers which automatically convert to three-dimensional shapes. This biomimetic 4-D printing could be the development of autonomous robots, medical implants or intelligent textiles continue to forge ahead.

“Our approach to 4-D printing can be structures with predefined functions created” says Lakshminarayanan Mahadevan of Harvard University in Cambridge. With his colleagues, he first developed a hydrogel that is used as a kind of printer ink. In this hydrogel, the researchers mix cellulose fibers, tiny clay particles and plastic monomers together. The liquid can be arranged in layers in arbitrary structures with a 3-D printer. Cured under ultraviolet light, complex objects, which deform when recording liquid according to the design of the object. Also deformations which again assumed its original shape at varying temperatures were possible

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The digital templates for the 3-D-pressure emerged on complex mathematical models. Everyone to be shaped portion of an object consists of a two-tier system. Each one of these layers can absorb water, swells up and turns the object into a three-dimensional structure. The second layer serves to stabilize. Mahadevan and his colleagues created according to this principle as an artificial orchid flower or a five-petalled ring structure in which the blades to small blades deformed. When taking water the transformation took about half an hour.

In further experiments it was possible to mix other materials such as ink liquid or metallic nanorods, the researchers believe. This would allow the objects as electrical conductivity, switching capacity and other properties can be imparted. But up to deployment will probably take several years. (ESC)

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