Hierarchical porous materials made by stereolithographic printing of photo-curable emulsions

TL;DR

This paper introduces a novel stereolithographic printing method for creating hierarchical porous materials with controlled multi-scale porosity and complex geometries, enhancing functionalities for various technological applications.

Contribution

It presents an experimental platform combining Pickering emulsions and stereolithography to fabricate hierarchical porous structures with tunable properties and intricate designs.

Findings

Successfully fabricated architectured lattices with tunable mechanical properties.

Produced large complex-shaped inorganic objects with unprecedented porous architectures.

Demonstrated control over pore size and geometry at multiple length scales.

Abstract

Porous materials are relevant for a broad range of technologies from catalysis and filtration, to tissue engineering and lightweight structures. Controlling the porosity of these materials over multiple length scales often leads to enticing new functionalities and higher efficiency but has been limited by manufacturing challenges and the poor understanding of the properties of hierarchical structures. Here, we report an experimental platform for the design and manufacturing of hierarchical porous materials via the stereolithographic printing of stable photo-curable Pickering emulsions. In the printing process, the micron-sized droplets of the emulsified resins work as soft templates for the incorporation of microscale porosity within sequentially photo-polymerized layers. The light patterns used to polymerize each layer on the building stage further generate controlled pores with bespoke three-dimensional geometries at the millimetre scale. Using this combined fabrication approach, we create architectured lattices with mechanical properties tuneable over several orders of magnitude and large complex-shaped inorganic objects with unprecedented porous designs.