Understanding the structure-property relationships of nanostructured epoxy inks for direct ink writing

Direct ink writing (DIW) figures to be an important additive manufacturing technique in the future due to the wide variety of the materials that can be printed including polymers, hydrogels, nanocomposites and ceramic/metal slurries. Rather than material limitations, the main limitations are imposed by the rheological requirements of the inks – they need to behave as solids with no shear applied, yet readily flow when pressure is applied during the printing process. Over the last few years, we have been studying the structure-property relationships of nanostructured, 3D printable epoxy inks. Nanostructure has been imparted to the inks through the use of block copolymer micelles and/or inorganic nanoparticles. In this presentation, we will discuss how these nanostructures affects the rheology and the printability of the inks as well as the epoxy crosslinking kinetics.