(165d) Directed Self-Assembly of Nanostructured Polymers Via 3D Printing: achieving Mechanically Tailored Soft Architectures

Nanostructured polymers, such as liquid crystalline polymers and block copolymers with intrinsically anisotropic self-assembled nanostructures, can be macroscopically oriented to exhibit multiple orders of magnitude in anisotropy in their material properties and stimuli response. Here, we leverage material extrusion additive manufacturing to crease soft hierarchically ordered structures, bridging the interface between top-down manufacturing and bottom-up self-assembly. We demonstrate that in both classes of materials we can control the extent of nanostructure alignment and functional anisotropy via the flow the material undergoes during 3DP; for thermoplastic elastomer block copolymers, post-printing thermal annealing additionally plays a critical role in driving long-range alignment. To demonstrate the versatility of this approach, we tailor print paths to fabricate soft architectures with designer macroscopic behavior such as controlled localization of tensile and flexural strain upon deformation.