Fast Damage-Healing of Rigid Photocuring 3D Printing Materials Capable of Directly Recycling in 3D Printing

ACS Macro Lett. 2023 Jun 20;12(6):719-724. doi: 10.1021/acsmacrolett.3c00116. Epub 2023 May 17.

Abstract

Rigid 3D printing materials often get defects such as cavities, voids, holes, or gaps when suffering from impact forces. Fast self-healing of these damages without bulk temperature increase is always desired. Besides, the recycling of dynamically cross-linked polymers was usually focused on solvent- or heat-assisted strategies such as compression molding and dissolution-casting, which restricts the geometrical diversity of recycled materials and may cause environmental issues. Here we report a rigid photocuring 3D printing material that can heal its cave-like damage quickly under UV light based on the dynamic urea bond. Besides, after grounding the printed objects into powders and directly refilling them into new printing resin, the re-3D printed objects show similar mechanical properties to the original materials without any post-treatment.