3D reactive inkjet printing of aliphatic polyureas using in-air coalescence technique.

An in-flight coalescence reactive inkjet printer has been developed to facilitate the in-air collision of two reactive microdroplets. This way precise volumes of reactive inks can be mixed and subsequently deposited on the substrate to produce the desired product by polymer synthesis and patterning in a single step. In this work, we validate the printer capabilities by fabrication of a series of 3D structures using an aliphatic polyurea system (isophorone diisocyanate IPDI and poly(propylene glycol) bis(2-aminopropyl ether) PEA-400).