Wood – out of the 3D printer
Through emulating the natural cellular architecture of wood, the researchers present the ability to create green products derived from trees, with unique properties – everything from clothes, packaging, and furniture to healthcare and personal care products.
The way in which wood grows is controlled by its genetic code, which gives it unique properties in terms of porosity, toughness and torsional strength. But wood has limitations when it comes to processing. Unlike metals and plastics, it cannot be melted and easily reshaped, and instead must be sawn, planed or curved. Processes which do involve conversion, to make products such as paper, card and textiles, destroy the underlying ultrastructure, or architecture of the wood cells. The technology now presented by the Chalmers University researchers allows wood to be, in effect, grown into exactly the shape desired for the final product, through the medium of 3D printing.
By previously converting wood pulp into a nanocellulose gel, the researchers had already succeeded in creating a type of ink that could be 3D printed. Now, they present a major progression – successfully interpreting and digitising wood’s genetic code, so that it can instruct a 3D printer. Thus, the arrangement of the cellulose nanofibrils can be precisely controlled during the printing process, to actually replicate the desirable ultrastructure of wood. Being able to manage the orientation and shape means that they can capture those useful properties of natural wood.
“This is a breakthrough in manufacturing technology. It allows us to move beyond the limits of nature, to create new sustainable, green products. It means that those products which today are already forest-based can now be 3D printed, in a much shorter time. And the metals and plastics currently used in 3D printing can be replaced with a renewable, sustainable alternative,” says Professor Paul Gatenholm, who has led this research within the Wallenberg Wood Science Centre at Chalmers University of Technology.
The new technology opens up a new area of possibilities. Wood-based products could now be designed and ‘grown’ to order – at a vastly reduced timescale compared with natural wood.
Gatenholm’s group has already developed a prototype for an innovative packaging concept. They printed out honeycomb structures, with chambers in between the printed walls, and then managed to encapsulate solid particles inside those chambers. Cellulose has excellent oxygen barrier properties, meaning this could be a promising method for creating airtight packaging for foodstuffs or pharmaceuticals for example.
Manufacturing products in this way could lead to huge savings in terms of resources and harmful emissions, Gatenholm believes. If enterprises and perhaps private users could print packaging locally, an alternative to today’s industries, with their heavy reliance on plastics and C02-generating transport would become available.
More information: Applied Materials Today, “Materials from trees assembled by 3D printing – Wood tissue beyond nature limits”
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