(152d) 3D Printing Functional Voxels: Fate and Transport of Quantum Dots Under Capillary Flow

Nanotechnology is a technological branch that focuses on nanomaterials with dimensions smaller than 100 nm. Nanotechnology has and continues to impact many industries: petroleum, materials, cosmetics, and pharmaceutics, etc¹. More than 1,300 consumer products based on nanotechnology have entered the marketplace². Some common nanomaterials include: silica, fullerol, alumoxane, carbon nanotubes, metal oxide nanoparticles, nanocrystals, and quantum dots.

For three dimensional printing (3DP) companies, the ability to integrate these nanomaterials into additive manufacturing is a desirable outcome. By incorporating these nanomaterials into 3DP, it allows for an even broader platform of materials. Expanding the materials portfolio empowers the consumer, enabling those individuals the potential to develop and engineer novel materials to exploit new functional properties.

Understanding the transport and fate of these nano-sized materials is vital as these materials may eventually contaminate the subsurface environment and become a threat to the watertable³. Concern arise as evidence proposes that some nanomaterials can negatively impact human health and the environment². A fundamental understanding of the fate of nanomaterials, specifically nanoparticles, is imperative for both applications as well as environmental and health impact.

This presentation proposes a novel non-invasive technique with high temporal and spatial resolution for imaging nanoparticle transport and retention in polymeric powders used for 3D printing. Engineering on the voxel-scale is a multi-physics process involving the infiltration, transport, adsorption, and retention of engineered nanoparticles (ENP’s) suspended in a carrier solvent. Fundamentally, solute transport and retention in porous media involves macroscopic fluid dynamics, mesoscale advection-dispersion processes, and competing microscale physiochemical forces and interactions (e.g. DLVO forces) that occur at the interfaces between the solute particles and the porous media^3–5.

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3. Torkzaban, S., Bradford, S. A., Wan, J., Tokunaga, T. & Masoudih, A. Release of quantum dot nanoparticles in porous media: Role of cation exchange and aging time. Environ. Sci. Technol. 47, 11528–11536 (2013).
4. Bradford, S. A. & Torkzaban, S. Colloid Transport and Retention in Unsaturated Porous Media: A Review of Interface-, Collector-, and Pore-Scale Processes and Models. Vadose Zo. J. 7, 667 (2008).
5. Goldberg, E. et al. What Factors Determine the Retention Behavior of Engineered Nanomaterials in Saturated Porous Media? (2017). doi:10.1021/acs.est.6b05217