Their technique features much thinner and better-targeted paint application, using significantly fewer materials than traditional methods. Using their approach, Rutgers engineers are building an accessory for 3D printers that will, for the first time, allow automated coating of 3D-printed parts with functional, protective or aesthetic layers of paint. But in recent decades, it has also been used in lab-scale demonstrations of coatings that deliver vaccines, light-absorbing layers of solar cells and fluorescent quantum dots (tiny particles) for LED displays. This technique (electrospray deposition) has been used mainly for analytical chemistry. The engineers discovered new capabilities of a technology that creates a fine spray of droplets by applying a voltage to fluid flowing through a nozzle. Singer, an assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering in the School of Engineering at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. "Our technique is a more efficient way to coat not only conventional objects, but even hydrogel soft robots, and our coatings are robust enough to survive complete immersion in water and repeated swelling and de-swelling by humidity," said senior author Jonathan P.
The findings are published in the journal ACS Applied Materials & Interfaces.Ĭonventional sprays and brushes can't reach all nooks and crannies in complex 3D-printed objects, but the new technique coats any exposed surface and fosters rapid prototyping.