4D printing? How 3D-printed materials that can change their shape could change the world

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4D printing? How 3D-printed materials that can change their shape could change the world

An employee at an Ohio steel manufacturer on March 1, 2012. The US has insisted that only American steel be used to renovate a ferry terminal on Canadian soil (AFP Photo/Jim Watson)

Additive manufacturing – or 3D printing – is 30 years old this year. Today, it’s found not just in industry but in households, as the price of 3D printers has fallen below US$1,000. Knowing you can print almost anything, not just marks on paper, opens up unlimited opportunities for us to manufacture toys, household appliances and tools in our living rooms.

But there’s more that can be done with 3D printed materials to make them more flexible and more useful: structures that can transform in a pre-programmed way in response to a stimulus. Recently given the popular science name of “4D printing”, perhaps a better way to think about it is that the object transforms over time.

These sorts of structural deformations are not new – researchers have already demonstrated “memory” and “smart material” properties. One of the most popular technologies is known as shape memory alloy, where a change of temperature triggers a shape change. Other successful approaches use electroactive polymers, pressurised fluids or gasses, chemical stimulus and even in response to light.
In a paper published in Nature Scientific Reports, we looked at the design of complex self-deformations in objects that have been printed from multiple materials as a means to customise the object into specific forms.

Unlike many others who have demonstrated how to bend simple paper-like shapes, we constructed a two-dimensional grid structure that deforms itself by stretching or shrinking across a complex three-dimensional surface….MORE HERE

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4D printing? How 3D-printed materials that can change their shape could change the world