(532c) Multi-Scale Manufacturing of Advanced Plastics and Fiber: Process-Structure-Property Investigation

Polymer has played a vital role in nearly every application in the current era; consequently, its process-structure-property has been thoroughly investigated for decades. The recent advancement in nano-scale fabrication, additive manufacturing, and wearable technologies have resulted in the discovery and engineering of novel properties that arise from polymer and its composites. The Park research group leads both computational and experimental efforts to harness novel properties of polymer/composites to manufacture advanced materials. To this end, this talk will focus on recent efforts on three topics: i) polymer physics under confinement and high-strain, ii) multifunctional fibers and textiles, and iii) multi-material additive manufacturing. Firstly, a recent finding of ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) nanofibers that exhibit remarkable combination of high toughness, modulus, and strength on the order of 1 GPa, 120 GPa, and 6 GPa, respectively. Such unusual display of properties is believed to originate from a) high strain during the processing step and b) relatively defect-free nature of these materials below a critical dimension. Then on-going efforts on core/shell multi-material FDM 3d printing and thermoresponsive fibers will be presented.