pps proceeding - Abstract Preview
pps proceeding
Symposium: S01 - Advanced Processing and additive Manufacturing
Oral Presentation
 
 

Soft PDMS 3D printing: Enhancing the yield stress for very low Young modulus medical devices.

Perrinet Clément (1)*, Fulchiron René (1), Courtial Edwin-Joeffrey (1), Marquette Christophe (1), Colly Arthur (1)

(1) UCBL Lyon 1 - Villeurbanne - France

3D printing silicone has been a challenge for medical applications for several years. The main property of medical silicone (mostly PDMS) is its mechanical similitude with human tissues. Human tissues elasticity is included in the range of 10MPa to 10kPa of Young modulus. Above 1MPa, it corresponds to cartilaginous tissues (trachea, esophagus...) and under 100kPa, are very soft tissues as prostate, skin, liver…. 3D print such soft materials is not as obvious as printing classical polymers (PLA, ABS, photo resins…). Photo sensible silicone are excluded since acrylate function in the polymer (the most used photo sensible function) leads to a hard binding with the curing. This communication is about a study which aims to print materials of modulus down to 100kPa. The 3D printing selected process is the simplest, namely the Liquid Deposition Modeling (LDM), a derivative of the FDM process which is basically the deposit of an extruded filament geo-driven by a computer. The main challenge is keeping the material with a sufficient firmness during the process to maintain the shape of a layer by layer made object while getting a very low rigidity after the process. The idea is to modify a RTV 2 silicon formulation to enhance the consistency before the cross-linking without increasing or even lowering the rigidity thereafter. Therefore, the RTV is mixed with a non-miscible low molar mass polymer to make a high yield stress behavior thanks to the creation of a percolated network between silica particles and/or an emulsion where the interfacial tension between the phases increases the consistency of the blend. This presentation relates the development of an elegant way to print soft silicone by exploring material rheology, processing development, co-continuous polymers blend, emulsion behavior, and materials viscoelasticity.