Vincent Voet: Sustainable Photopolymers in Additive Manufacturing: Biobased and Recyclable Alternatives

Additive manufacturing (AM), alias 3D printing, enables on-demand fabrication of tailor-made products with complex architectures. The global market for 3D printing materials has grown exponentially in the last decade. By 2029, the worldwide revenues for AM materials are forecast to grow to €20 billion, with the largest market shares for aerospace, defence, medical and dental industries. Today, photopolymers claim almost half of the material sales worldwide.

The lack of sustainable photopolymers for stereolithography 3D printing that can compete with commercial resins, however, limits the widespread adoption of this technology. The development of ‘green alternatives’ is of great importance in order to reduce the environmental impact of additive manufacturing. In this seminar, we explore the development of novel photocurable resins based on renewable resources such as vegetable oils and cashew nutshell liquids.1,2 In addition, the recent application of reprocessable thermosetting polymers in vat photopolymerization, based on our recent work on vitrimers,3 is discussed. Those strategies promote the accurate and waste-free production of a new generation of polymeric materials for a circular plastics economy.

[1] J. Guit, M.B.L. Tavares, J. Hul, C. Ye, K. Loos, J. Jager, R. Folkersma, V.S.D. Voet, ACS Appl. Polym. Mater. 2020, 2, 949.

[2] V.S.D. Voet, J. Guit, K. Loos, Macromol. Rapid Commun. 2021, 42, 2000475.

[3] C. Ye, V.S.D. Voet, R. Folkersma, K. Loos, Adv. Mater. 2021, 33, 2008460.