Descripción del proyecto
Unidades de partículas programables en microrrobótica impresa en tres dimensiones para aplicaciones biomédicas
La fabricación aditiva, también llamada impresión en tres dimensiones (3D), se desarrolló originalmente en los años ochenta del siglo pasado para la creación rápida de prototipos de piezas grandes. Desde entonces, ha evolucionado enormemente y se utiliza cada vez más para producir piezas poliméricas sensibles y multifuncionales con aplicaciones que van desde la biomedicina hasta la microrrobótica. Para lograr un cambio radical de sus posibilidades, se requieren materiales y procesos novedosos. El proyecto 3DPartForm, financiado con fondos europeos, desarrolla fórmulas de micropartículas que permiten una funcionalidad integrada a nivel de la unidad. De manera muy similar a un vóxel, o píxel de volumen, que se refiere a una unidad de volumen de un objeto gráfico 3D, los científicos pretenden crear «vóxeles» materiales con propiedades de adaptación programables en el tiempo y el espacio que puedan ensamblarse en novedosas estructuras jerárquicas de respuesta. El resultado será una combinación de detección y activación de microrrobótica para aplicaciones biomédicas.
Objetivo
New polymer materials are necessary to match the demand for highly integrated, multifunctional, responsive systems for sensing, information processing, soft robotics or multi-parametric implants. Both established
material design concepts based on lithography, and emerging engineering efforts based on additive manufacturing (AM) are currently not able to fully address the need for topologically complex, multifunctional
and stimuli-responsive polymer materials. This proposal aims at establishing a radically new approach for polymer material design, rethinking AM on both material and process level. Here, functionality will be already
embedded at the building block level to emerge into larger scales. The exact methodology relies on polymer microparticles as a novel material basis with arbitrary geometry, function, mechanics and responsiveness.
These microparticulate formulations will serve as predefined, voxel-like building blocks in AM yielding hierarchical assemblies with spatially defined voxel position and programmable, adaptive properties, which clearly go beyond existing functional material classes. With that, 3DPartForm will address the current lack of additive manufacturing providing multifunctional, stimuli-responsive materials, in which not only strongly different, but most importantly functional building blocks with intrinsic time axis will be processed into true 4D-polymer multimaterials. Products emerging from this approach will reach a previously unknown level of system integration, where optical transparency, electric and thermal conductivity as well as diffusivity and mechanical rigidity will become spatiotemporally tunable at single-voxel level. Coupled sensing and actuation operations will be realized by processing, transforming and manipulating single or combined input stimuli within these materials in the focus of 3DPartform, and platforms for biomimetics and cell-free biotechnology will be implemented as a long-term goal.
Ámbito científico
- natural scienceschemical sciencespolymer sciences
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringroboticssoft robotics
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringmanufacturing engineeringadditive manufacturing
- medical and health sciencesmedical biotechnologyimplants
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesdata sciencedata processing
Palabras clave
Programa(s)
Régimen de financiación
ERC-STG - Starting GrantInstitución de acogida
39106 Magdeburg
Alemania