Résumé
The impact of a brand-new technology on the society is often hard to anticipate. 3D printing isn’t an exception to this statement, from the initial idea developed in the 60’s to today’s application of 3D printer in various work environment, the spreading of this innovation is as sudden as it was tough to predict. In material chemistry however, the benefits of 3D printing were quickly spotted and led to several applications, especially in catalysis. Nevertheless, such technic often relies on extrusion process, with the inorganic loading being often low and the print accuracy limited by both the high viscosity of the slurry employed and the nozzle diameter. In the present work, we would like to present a less popular 3D printing method for the production of monoliths relying on digital light processing (DLP). Based on the previous work from Ma et al [1], nano-silica dodecahedral cages functionalized with methacrylate chains are used for 3D printing. Such particles, after being formulated as an ink with propylene carbonate and a photo-initiator, allow the printing of structure containing up to 70 % of inorganic matter. Those inks, with a custom printer build at ICGM, are used to produce monoliths with highly complex pores networks such as gyroid lattice. Moreover, monoliths can be printed with different inks as illustrated bellow at the figure I, thus allowing the manufacturing of structures with various materials. Since the printing method relies on DLP, different material density can be achieved in a single print as well, by modifying the light intensity with digital masks.While still working on the formulation of a wider variety of inks including various materials to introduce catalytic sites, the current method already allows the complete design of materials from the nano to the centimeter scale. Such DLP printing process will most certainly be of great interest for future applications in catalysis and bring concern from the chemist community.[1] Kai. Ma, Yunye. Gong, Tangi. Aubert, et al, Self-assembly of highly symmetrical, ultrasmall inorganic cages directed by surfactant micelles, Nature 558 (2018) 577.