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R. Liska:
"Photopolymerization: From Biomaterials to 3D Printing";
Vortrag: 7th Meeting on Chemistry and Life 2018, Brno University of Technology (eingeladen); 12.09.2018 - 14.09.2018.

UV curing of photopolymerizable formulations has been used for more than a half century for protective and decorative coatings of paper, wood, metals or plastics. Advantages can for sure been found in the high curing speed that allows the conversion of typically (meth)acrylate-based monomers within the fraction of a second. Furthermore, a large variety of monomers is commercially available so that the mechanical properties and other polymer characteristics can be easily tuned.

In the last decade there has been a strong demand for the curing of bulk materials. If one wants to have arbitrarily shaped 3D cellular structures, additive manufacturing technology (AMT), also called Rapid Prototyping, is the method of choice. Different setups are commercially available that allow the printing of photopolymerizable formulations from a simple CAD model. Laser or DLP (Digital light processing) based systems fabricate polymer parts with a feature resolution of about 10 µm. In recent days not only prototypes are of interest, also small number of individual parts that can be used in the automotive industry or for medical applications are important. Especially in the latter case monomers and polymers with low toxicity should be used. Vinylcarbonates represent a new and interesting class of photopolymers with exceptionally low cytotoxicity and suitable photoreactivity. Degradation can be easily tuned giving non-toxic low molecular polyvinyl alcohol as degradation product and various non-toxic alcohols such as glycerol or polyethylene glycol. In vivo experiments demonstrated excellent biocompatibility.

Two photon photopolymerization (TPP) is another rapid prototyping technique that allows a real 3D writing process with feature resolutions of about 200 nm. Using suitable monomers and photoinitiators we were able to write with a femtosecond pulsed laser in the presence of living cells without harming them.

UV curing of photopolymerizable formulations, the curing of bulk materials, arbitrarily shaped 3D cellular structures, additive manufacturing technology, two photon photopolymerization