Fabrication of nanocellulose/PEGDA hydrogel by 3D printing
ISSN: 1355-2546
Article publication date: 18 October 2018
Issue publication date: 14 November 2018
Abstract
Purpose
Nanocellulose is characterised by favourable biocompatibility, degradability, nanostructure effect, high modulus and high tensile strength and has been widely applied in various fields. The current research in the field of new nanocellulose materials mainly focuses on the hydrogel, aerogel and the tissue engineering scaffold. All of these are three-dimensional (3D) porous materials, but conventional manufacturing technology fails to realise precise control. Therefore, the method of preparing structural materials using 3D printing and adopting the nanocellulose as the 3D printing material has been proposed. Then, how to realise 3D printing of nanocellulose is the problem that should be solved.
Design/methodology/approach
By adding the photosensitive component polyethyleneglycol diacrylate (PEGDA) in the aqueous dispersion system of nanocellulose, the nanocellulose was endowed with photosensitivity. Then, nanocellulose/PEGDA hydrogels were prepared by the additive manufacturing of nanocellulose through light curing.
Findings
The results showed that the nanocellulose/PEGDA hydrogels had a uniform shape and a controllable structure. The nanocellulose supported the scaffold structure in the hydrogels. Prepared with 1.8 per cent nanocellulose through 40 s of light curing, the nanocellulose/PEGDA hydrogels had a maximum compression modulus of 0.91 MPa. The equilibrium swelling ratio of the nanocellulose/PEGDA hydrogel prepared with 1.8 per cent nanocellulose was 13.56, which increased by 44 per cent compared with that of the PEGDA hydrogel without nanocellulose.
Originality/value
The paper proposed a method for rapidly prototyping the nanocellulose with expected properties, which provided a theoretical basis and technological reference for the 3D additive manufacturing of nanocellulose 3D structure materials with a controlled accurate architecture.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by State Key Laboratory of Pulp and Paper Engineering (2015C09, 201532), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2015ZM180) and the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (2015A010104006).
Citation
Tang, A., Wang, Q., Zhao, S. and Liu, W. (2018), "Fabrication of nanocellulose/PEGDA hydrogel by 3D printing", Rapid Prototyping Journal, Vol. 24 No. 8, pp. 1265-1271. https://doi.org/10.1108/RPJ-03-2016-0049
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited