Regulated acrylate networks as tough photocurable materials for additive manufacturing

Abstract

In lithography-based additive manufacturing, mostly crosslinking monomers with acrylate functionality are applied, which yield brittle materials with inhomogeneous network architectures. The toughening of state-of-the-art materials is an integral requirement for the advancement of photopolymer-based three-dimensional (3D) products. Here we show that the final material properties of acrylate networks can be adjusted through regulation of the radical curing mechanism using difunctional vinyl sulfonate esters to obtain toughened 3D structured materials. A substantial improvement of the thermomechanical behavior of resulting materials over materials regulated by state-of-the-art reagents (e.g. thiols) is presented and first 3D parts have successfully been printed. Resulting materials exhibit reduced shrinkage stress, reduced warpage, higher overall conversion and higher glass transition temperatures compared with the pure acrylate network.