Additive manufacturing processes such as 3D printing use time-consuming, stepwise layer-by-layer approaches to object fabrication. We demonstrate the continuous generation of monolithic polymeric parts up to tens of centimeters in size with feature resolution below 100 micrometers. Continuous liquid interface production is achieved with an oxygen-permeable window below the ultraviolet image projection plane, which creates a "dead zone" (persistent liquid interface) where photopolymerization is inhibited between the window and the polymerizing part. We delineate critical control parameters and show that complex solid parts can be drawn out of the resin at rates of hundreds of millimeters per hour. These print speeds allow parts to be produced in minutes instead of hours.

A sustained effort to develop and commercialize a practical radical addition route to amine functional polymers (AFPs) resulted, after almost 20 years, in the successful completion of a world scale monomer plant to produce N‐vinylformamide (NVF). NVF is readily polymerized and its polymers are easily hydrolyzed to reactive and atom economical polyvinylamine (PVAm) or its salts. This highlight touches on work by many companies, but focuses on efforts at Air Products and Chemicals, tracing the origins, rational, challenges, technical and commercial advances, and failures. Practical routes to new AFPs, copolymers, and derivatives across the entire molecular weight range (MW < 103 to >106) were achieved. NVF offers access to multiple water soluble, water dispersible, and nonwater soluble polymer markets, including papermaking additives and coatings, water treatment polymers, enhanced oil recovery polymers, radiation cure monomers, stabilizers, dispersing agents, surfactants, and crosslinkers. Lessons learned along the road to commercializing major new chemical technologies are also highlighted. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 48: 2257–2283, 2010

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