3D printed gel can morph with temperature change

(Credit: Daehoon Han/Rutgers University-New Brunswick)

According to the team, the smart gel could provide structural rigidity in organs such as the lungs, and can contain small molecules like water or drugs to be transported in the body and released. It could also help develop a new area of soft robotics, and enable applications in flexible sensors and actuators, biomedical devices and platforms or scaffolds for cells to grow. The work is published in Scientific Reports.

“The full potential of this smart hydrogel has not been unleashed until now," said Howon Lee, senior author of the new study and assistant professor in Rutgers’ Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. "We added another dimension to it, and this is the first time anybody has done it on this scale. They're flexible, shape-morphing materials. I like to call them smart materials."

The engineers used a lithography-based technique to print a wide range of materials, creating layers of a special resin to build 3D objects. The resin consists of the hydrogel, a chemical that acts as a binder, another chemical that facilitates bonding when light hits it, and a dye that controls light penetration.