Novel Polymer Systems for Additive Manufacturing

We plan to revolutionise the materials available for the 3D printing technique "selective laser sintering" (SLS). Currently these are limited to just a few materials; predominantly the commercially available Nylon 12 that has the right laser absorption properties to allow melting and hence fusion of neighbouring particles. This range of materials must be expanded if the laser sintering technique is to fulfil its potential to revolutionise society's approach to creating everyday materials and objects.
We have developed totally new polymer synthetic strategies leading to highly controlled and perfectly spherical microparticulate materials. The key innovation is our ability to exploit supercritical fluid synthetic approaches to allow bespoke design of microparticles. We have now devised routes that allow us to introduce surface functionalities, such as epoxide or alkenes that could form covalent bonds between the particles leading to significantly more robust products after laser printing. Moreover we can tailor the process to introduce dyes to produce coloured materials and this same methodology also provides the opportunity to vary the primary absorption and thus open up a wide range of potential laser sources away from the rather limited but currently ubiquitous CO2 lasers.