Collaborative Research: Designer Microstructures by Additive Manufacturing of Functional Emulsions

合作研究：通过功能乳液增材制造设计微结构

• 批准号: 2054409
• 负责人: Michael Bartlett
• 金额: $ 35.95万
• 依托单位: Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2021
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2021-08-01 至 2024-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=2054409&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Collaborative; Research; Designer; Microstructures; Additive

Functional emulsions are an emerging material architecture for creating highly functional elastomer composites that are soft and elastically deformable. However, techniques to control local composition and microstructure of the composite material in emulsions, which ultimately govern material properties and performance of the cured elastomer composite, are lacking. This award supports fundamental research to develop an additive manufacturing technique to control liquid inclusion microstructure in emulsions to achieve unprecedented combinations of thermal, electrical, and mechanical functionalities in elastomer composites. By developing the material and manufacturing knowledge to program inclusion microstructure, new paradigms in composite architecture for next generation functional materials are enabled leading to new applications in electronics and robotics, which benefits the U.S. economy and society. Through a collection of ‘behind the research’ videos generated by team members and a manufacturing workshop for 9-12 grade students, the project provides inspiration and training for future leaders in the emerging fields of additive manufacturing and soft robotics.This project establishes the processing-structure-property relationships of additively manufactured functional emulsions that can be cured into an elastomer composite of complex geometry. This is achieved by creating model emulsion inks, processing methods, and in-situ process monitoring to determine how material composition and printing conditions influence material microstructure. These fundamental processing and material insights are combined with new theoretical models for emulsion extrusion to predict the microstructure of liquid phase inclusions throughout a manufactured part. Liquid metal and glycerol liquid phase inclusions are examined as they present distinctly different fundamental properties, but both offer broad applicability in the field of soft matter engineering. In contrast to rigid carbon black, copper, or silica particle fillers that have fixed shape and size, the on-demand control of liquid inclusion morphology via direct ink write processing provides a new and efficient method to manufacture elastomeric composites. During the manufacturing process, the local material composition and liquid inclusion microstructure are actively tailored to control the electrical, thermal, and mechanical properties of elastomeric composites. By combining printing ink properties and process control with tool design and modeling this work provides new fundamental knowledge to create scalable manufacturing strategies for processing emulsions. This leads to novel model material systems with programmable processing-structure-property relationships to determine physics-based properties of multi-component soft matter.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

功能乳液是一种新兴的材料结构，用于创建柔软且弹性变形的高功能弹性体组成。但是，缺乏控制乳液中复合材料的局部组成和微观结构的技术，这些技术最终缺乏控制固化弹性体复合材料的材料特性和性能。该奖项支持基本研究，以开发一种额外的制造技术，以控制乳液中的液体包容性微观结构，以实现弹性体组成中热，电气和机械功能的前所未有的组合。通过将材料和制造知识开发到程序包容性微观结构中，启用了下一代功能材料的复合体系结构的新范式，从而导致电子和机器人技术中的新应用，从而使美国经济和社会受益。 Through a collection of ‘behind the research’ videos generated by team members and a manufacturing workshop for 9-12 grade students, the project provides inspiration and training for future leaders in the emerging fields of additive manufacturing and soft robotics.This project establishes the processing-structure-property relationships of added manufacturing functional emulsions that can be cured into an elastomer composite of complex geometry.这是通过创建模型乳化墨水，处理方法和原位过程监测来实现的，以确定材料组成和印刷条件如何影响材料微观结构。这些基本处理和材料见解与乳液扩展的新理论模型相结合，以预测整个制造部分的液相夹杂物的微观结构。液态金属和甘油液相夹杂物在呈现明显不同的基本特性时进行了检查，但在软材料工程领域都具有广泛的适用性。与具有固定形状和尺寸的刚性碳黑色，铜或二氧化硅颗粒填充剂相反，通过直接墨水写入处理对液体包容形态的按需控制提供了一种制造弹性体组成的新方法。在制造过程中，局部材料组成和液体包容性微观结构是为控制弹性体组成的电气，热和机械性能而量身定制的。通过将印刷墨水属性和过程控制与工具设计和建模相结合，这项工作提供了新的基本知识，以创建可扩展的制造策略来处理乳液。这导致具有可编程的处理结构 - 专业关系的新型模型材料系统，以确定基于物理的多组分软件的属性。该奖项反映了NSF的法定任务，并通过使用基金会的智力优点和更广泛的影响来评估NSF的法定任务。