Novel Thiol-Ene Photo Resins for Stereolithography with Enhanced Mechanical and Optical Properties

Abstract

Stereolithography is a lithography-based additive manufacturing technology, in which liquid photoreactive resins are solidified by ultraviolet or visible light in a layer-wise approach. Additive manufacturing technologies are used in personalized medicine, for example, for the production of otoplastics, dentistry, prosthetics but also in tissue engineering. Here, biocompatibility of the produced parts is mandatory. In this work a chemistry is further investigated which is rarely used in stereolithography—thiol-ene click chemistry. Polymers made by thiol-ene chemistry have various promising optical, mechanical, biological, and chemical properties for medical applications. In this work new photo resins based on thiol-ene click chemistry are developed and the resulting polymers are analyzed to determine the suitability of these materials as thiol-ene photo resins. Furthermore, the influence of crosslinker functionality in systems with equal degree of crosslinking and the concept of prepolymerization of two bifunctional components for thiol-ene photo resins will be presented in this study.