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New method promises advances in 3D printing, manufacturing and biomedical applications

Although both 3D printers and traditional manufacturers already use droplets to carefully add material to their products, the new jet method offers greater flexibility and precision than standard techniques, the researchers said. For example, delivering droplets with jets allows for extremely small sizes and allows designers to change droplet sizes, shapes and dispersion, as well as patterns of droplets, on the fly.

"A key aspect is the simplicity of the method," said Pierre-Thomas Brun, an assistant professor of chemical and biological engineering at Princeton and the lead researcher. "You draw something on the computer, and you can create it."

In an article published Oct. 28 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers describe how to control the dispersion of drops from a thin jet of liquid. They were able to inject calibrated droplets of glycerin into a liquid polymer to demonstrate placement over three dimensions -- a key requirement for manufacturing. By curing the polymer, the researchers were able to affix the droplets in desired locations. Although the researchers used glycerin for the experiment, they said the method would work with a wide variety of substances commonly used in manufacturing and research.

Journal Reference:

Lingzhi Cai, Joel Marthelot, and P.-T. Brun. Unbounded microfluidics: Rayleigh-Plateau instability of a viscous jet in a viscous bath. PNAS, 2019 DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1914270116

Original Submission