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Abstract_Shanyu Zhao
Biopolymer aerogels are lightweight, highly porous materials derived from natural polymers such as cellulose, chitosan, starch, and alginate, and are gaining increasing attention due to their sustainability and biodegradability, offering a more eco-friendly alternative to synthetic counterparts. These aerogels combine low density, large surface area, and tunable porosity, providing excellent mechanical strength, thermal insulation, and adsorption properties, making them suitable for diverse applications such as drug delivery, water purification, energy storage, and thermal insulation. Additive manufacturing (AM) has emerged as a versatile tool for creating complex geometries and customized functionalities in material design. However, the challenge with applying AM to biopolymer aerogels lies in selecting a method that preserves the desired microstructures while achieving intricate macroscopic designs in a single sample. The research team at Empa is working on a direct ink writing method for 3D printing intricate, high-fidelity biopolymer aerogel forms. These printed aerogels exhibit tunable anisotropic mechanical and thermal properties by incorporating fibers of different length scales into the hydrogel inks. The alignment of these structures significantly enhances mechanical strength and thermal resistance. Due to the special gel structures induced by the ink, the printed aerogels also demonstrate excellent rehydration properties for biomedical applications, retaining their high surface area (≈300 m²/g) while significantly improving mechanical properties. Preliminary studies show that these printed aerogels exhibit excellent cellular viability (>90% for NIH/3T3 fibroblasts) and significantly improved drug release profiles, such as for Ketoprofen.
KEYWORDS: Biopolymers, Aerogels, Additive manufacturing, structure-properties correlation