1 research outputs found
High-Strength Stereolithographic 3D Printed Nanocomposites: Graphene Oxide Metastability
The weak thermomechanical properties
of commercial 3D printing plastics have limited the technology’s
application mainly to rapid prototyping. In this report, we demonstrate
a simple approach that takes advantage of the metastable, temperature-dependent
structure of graphene oxide (GO) to enhance the mechanical properties
of conventional 3D-printed resins produced by stereolithography (SLA).
A commercially available SLA resin was reinforced with minimal amounts
of GO nanofillers and thermally annealed at 50 and 100 °C for
12 h. Tensile tests revealed increasing strength and modulus at an
annealing temperature of 100 °C, with the highest tensile strength
increase recorded at 673.6% (for 1 wt % GO). Thermogravimetric analysis
(TGA) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) also showed increasing
thermal stability with increasing annealing temperature. The drastic
enhancement in mechanical properties, which is seen to this degree
in 3D-printed samples reported in literature, is attributed to the
metastable structure of GO, polymer–nanofiller cross-linking
via acid-catalyzed esterification, and removal of intercalated water,
thus improving filler–matrix interaction as evidenced by spectroscopy
and microscopy analyses