Seminar on Multi-material and multi-scale additive manufacturing of composite materials for multifunctional applications

The development of advanced materials has become increasingly crucial to meet the growing demands of multifunctional applications in various industries. Nature has been an abundant source of inspiration for high-performance and mechanically efficient materials, which have undergone millions of years of evolution and natural selection to achieve their complex yet ordered hierarchical structures. With the advent of additive manufacturing, advanced materials can now be designed and manufactured with arbitrary designs not only in the macroscale, but also across multiple length scales ranging from nano-, micro- to macroscales.

In this talk, I will showcase our recent progress on multi-materials and multi-scale additive manufacturing of composite materials with promising multifunctional applications. Specifically, I will discuss the use of emulsion direct ink writing (DIW) to create hierarchical porous materials and their applications, shear-stress driven DIW to produce concentric cylindrical composites for multifunctional purposes, and ultrasound-assisted digital light projecting 3D printing of polymer composites for energy absorption applications. These examples demonstrate the potential of additive manufacturing in producing advanced materials with hierarchical microstructure and highly desirable properties for diverse industrial applications.