Titanium nanoparticles bonded polyacrylates with enhanced properties fabricated using DLP 3D printing

The present work focuses on the preparation of epoxy acrylate/titania materials using lithography-based additive manufacturing. A series of polymeric nanocomposite resin blends is formulated and cured with digital light processing (DLP) through three-dimensional printing studies. Epoxy acrylate oligomers are synthesized by reacting glycidyl methacrylate with acrylic acid, poly(ethylene glycol) dimethacrylate and poly(ethylene glycol) methyl ether methacrylate in the presence of triphenylphosphine as the catalyst and benzoin as the photoinitiator. The impact of TiO₂ nanoparticles in various formulations is investigated, and 3D designed specimens are successfully printed with a Creality LDR002-DLP machine. The resulting materials are characterized using Fourier Transform infrared spectroscopy, mechanical and thermal analyses, allowing for the determination of their chemical and physical properties. Although all the resin formulations investigated in this study are compatible with DLP-3D printing technology, the nanoparticle-incorporated formulations required less time to UV-cure compared to the other formulations. Notably, the printed specimens containing the TiO₂ nanoparticles exhibit better thermal stability and gel content. The highly crosslinked structure formation of these systems provides good dimensional stability, which is crucial for 3D printing.