Transparent gel engineering materials for 3D gel printing

Recently our group developed 3D gel printer named “SWIM-ER” (soft and wet industrial material - easy realizer). Here we aim to improve the gel materials used for SWIM-ER system about the problems around free-shaping, transparency, and mechanical strength. To overcome these problems, we tried to use UV absorbers, AS150 (Nippon Kayaku Co.,Ltd.) and KEMISORB11S (CHEMIPRO KASEI Co.,Ltd.) and found the latter absorber kept transparency well. We improved the maximum tensile stress about 2 times and the maximum tensile strain about 4 times by changing the kind of cross-linker from methylene bis-acrylamide (MBAA) type to diethylene glycol dimethacrylate (DEGDMA) type. We also found that the maximum tensile stress was improved about 1.3 times by changing the blend ratio of 1st gel powder and 2nd gel solution in the preparation of particle-double network gels (P-DN gel). Based on these two improvements, we 3D-printed the transparent and hollow structure of the high strength gels with the maximum tensile stress of 0.5 MPa, which will be comparable to the maximum tensile stress of living organs like the stomach and small intestine in our body.