EUROPEAN CONGRESS AND EXHIBITION ON ADVANCED MATERIALS AND PROCESSES - EUROMAT 2021

Hierarchical porous materials are attractive structures for a variety of applications due to their enhanced mechanical efficiency and their high surface area with minimum permeability loss. Nature showcases remarkable examples of hierarchical porous materials that benefit from such unusual set of properties, including bamboo, bone, marine sponges and wood. However, synthetic porous materials have yet to reach the elaborate architectural design found in their biological counterparts. To fill this gap, processing routes that enable deliberate control over the material’s porous structure at multiple length scales are highly demanded. In this talk, I will show how 3D printing of self-assembling inks can be exploited to fabricate hierarchical porous ceramics with unprecedented mechanical efficiency and architectural control. The key feature of our approach is to design inks with an internal structure that serves as a template for the formation of tailored pores within the printed object. Using oil droplets, air bubbles or phase-separating mixtures as templating structures, this methodology enables independent tuning of porosity and pore sizes at multiple length scales. To demonstrate the potential of the process, we 3D printed complex-shaped parts with bioinspired multiscale porosity and enhanced mechanical efficiency that cannot be achieved through conventional fabrication technologies.