3D Printing Unpeeled: Biofuel Waste to Filament & Sustainable Photopolymers

I can’t ever remember a day with so many potentially high impact news stories have come out. In one story, we all know that there are problems with the safety of resins. They also can not be recycled because they are thermosets and are derived from petrol. Now a University of Birmingham team has replaced (meth)acrylates with lipoates. These lipoates are renewable but can also be broken down and reprinted afterward, perhaps meaning we can have circular vat polymerization. 

Published in ACS Nano, researchers at KTH Royal Institute of Technology have made more detailed inorganic glass beam splitters out of solid silica glass. This has huge potential in MEMS or optical devices. 

A team at the University of Louisville has taken a biodiesel waste product, matter organic non-glycerol (MONG), and turned it into a natural fiber that could be used for 3D printed composites.