Oxygen Tolerant PET-RAFT Facilitated 3D Printing of Polymeric Materials under Visible LEDs

Photopolymerization-based 3D printing process is typically conducted using free radical polymerization, which leads to fabrication of immutable materials. An alternative 3D printing of polymeric materials using trithiocarbonate (TTC) reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) agents has always been a challenge for material and polymer scientists. Herein we report 3D printing of RAFT-based formulations that can be conducted fully open to air using standard digital light processing (DLP) 3D printer and under mild conditions of visible light at blue (λ max = 483 nm, 4.16 mW/cm2) or green (λ max = 532 nm, 0.48 mW/cm2) wavelength. Our approach is based on activation of TTC RAFT agents using eosin Y (EY) as a photoinduced electron-transfer (PET) catalyst in the presence of a reducing agent (triethylamine (TEA)), which facilitated oxygen tolerant 3D printing process via a reductive PET initiation mechanism. Re-activation of the TTCs present within the polymer networks enables post-printing monomer i...