© Kirill khaydukov (Illustration from the article Rocheva et al., 2018 / Scientific Reports)
Instructions for building a 3D printer based on them published in the journal Scientific Reports.
«This idea can be used in biomedical purposes, in particular, in tissue engineering, replacing the damaged parts of organs and tissues by using various polymer materials. We expect that our technology will allow to create structures of desired sizes and properties within living tissues to replace the damage,» said Cyril khaydukov of FNIC «crystallography and Photonics» Russian Academy of Sciences, quoted in a press-service of the RSF.
In recent years scientists and engineers have created dozens of new types of 3D printers, able to print almost any material, ranging from the classic plastic and ending with living cells and melt metals. These technologies have become very popular due to the versatility, low cost and flexibility, however, they are not devoid of drawbacks that have so far inhibited their proliferation.
For example, most 3D printers suffer from two interrelated problems — the low resolution and slow work. Both due to the fact that such installation print three-dimensional structures layer by layer, causing new layers of plastic to the workpiece. In most cases it is much easier and faster to carve the desired part from a single piece of plastic or metal, than to wait until it prints the printer.
Khaydukov and his colleagues solved this problem and developed the first fully-fledged three-dimensional printer. For this, they have created a nanoparticle capable of transforming the pulses of infrared radiation in the beams of ultraviolet light.
How are nanoparticles, 3D printing and a UV light? The fact is that many polymers that are used in such printers in the industry, get, firing beams of ultraviolet light a mixture of monomers and special substances that enhance the action of light. UV rays break down part of the preparations of the polymer and cause them to unite into chains.
The problem is that ultraviolet penetrates this mixture shallow, it is not possible to use the reaction of photo-polymerization for production of three-dimensional structures of large sizes. For this reason, for example, dentists are forced to put fillings in layers, processing light each portion of polymeric material separately.
Russian scientists have solved this problem by using nanoparticles from sodium, thulium, ytterbium and fluorine, which can evenly distribute the ultraviolet radiation over the entire thickness of the created three-dimensional designs. As a source of energy is infrared radiation.
As explained by physics, a mixture of liquid billet of polymeric materials will be almost completely transparent to infrared rays, unlike visible light or ultraviolet light, so they will «Shine through» the whole thickness and about the same to interact with the nanoparticles in the inner and outer layers of the future of the 3D structure.
According Hajdukova and his colleagues, their offspring compatible with existing polymer materials, which allows the use of the 3D printers into practice right now. They hope this idea will find application in three-dimensional laser drawing, microprocessing of materials, holography, and electronics and data processing systems.
https://chelorg.com/2018/04/04/russian-scientists-have-created-the-first-real-3d-printer/
