RESEARCHERS from SUSTech and Zhejiang University made substantial progress in the field of 3D printing hydrogel-polymer hybrids with the results recently published in Science Advances.

The cover article, titled 3D printing of highly stretchable hydrogel with diverse UV curable polymers, was contributed by Ge Qi, associate professor of SUSTech’s Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering, in collaboration with Professor Qu Shaoxing.

The research team reported a simple yet versatile multimaterial 3D printing approach to fabricate complex hydrogel-polymer hybrid structures, overcoming the poor bonding between the hydrogel and other polymers, according to a report at SUSTech’s website yesterday.

Digital light processing (DLP)-based 3D printing is an ideal technology to fabricate highly complex 3D structures with high resolution.

However, the capability of using DLP-based 3D printing to fabricate hydrogel-polymer hybrid structures has not yet been achieved, due to the limited choices for a highly efficient DLP-based multimaterial 3D printing system and the lack of a universal approach that forms robust bonding between high-performance hydrogels with diverse UV curable polymers.

Three application cases, used in the article, have demonstrated that the proposed new method can greatly enrich the design freedom and material choice of the hydrogel-polymer hybrid structures and devices, and further improve their functions and performances. Through the rigid polymer-reinforced microstructure design, the tensile modulus of the hydrogel-polymer hybrids can be increased by 30 times.

The printed shape memory polymer (SMP) stent can be squeezed into a compacted shape at the programming temperature and be fixed after cooling to a lower temperature. It would recover to its original shape in the body temperature of 37 degrees Celsius.

(Han Ximin)