Mechanical and Structural Properties of Polyhydroxybutyrate as Additive in Blend Material in Additive Manufacturing for Medical Applications

Abstract

Today, additive manufacturing (AM) is considered one of the vital tenets of the industry 4.0 revolution due to its high productivity, decentralized production and rapid prototyping. This work aims to study the mechanical and structural properties of polyhydroxybutyrate as an additive in blend materials and its potential in medical applications. PHB/PUA blend resins were formulated with 0 wt.%, 6 wt.%, 12 wt.% and 18 wt.% of PHB concentration. Stereolithography or an SLA 3D printing technique were used to evaluate the printability of the PHB/PUA blend resins. Additionally, from FESEM analysis, a change was observed in PUA’s microstructure, with an additional number of voids spotted. Furthermore, from XRD analysis, as PHB concentration increased, the crystallinity index (CI) also increased. This indicates the brittleness properties of the materials, which correlated to the weak performance of the tensile and impact properties. Next, the effect of PHB loading concentration within PHB/PUA blends and aging duration towards the mechanical performance of tensile and impact properties was also studied by using analysis of variance (ANOVA) with a two-way method. Finally, 12 wt.% of PHB/PUA was selected to 3D print the finger splint due to its characteristics, which are compatible to be used in finger bone fracture recovery.

Recycling and 3D-Printing Biodegradable Membranes for Gas Separation─toward a Membrane Circular Economy

“…The band at 1454 cm –1 suggested the asymmetric bending of the −CH 2 and −CH 3 groups. Moreover, a moderately intense band at 3435 cm –1 was identified as belonging to the hydroxyl group, which agrees with a typical FTIR spectrum of PHB reported in literature 51 , 60 The findings imply that recycling the polymer did not alter its chemical properties nor introduce any new chemical components. 61 …”

“…The XRD spectra of the neat PHB granule, and the respective cycles of recycled PHB are presented in Figure S1 . The diffractograms show similar crystalline characteristics depicting orthorhombic crystalline planes, 51 , 52 with three characteristic crystalline peaks at 2θ 13.5, 16.9, and 25.5° assigned to the (020), (110), and (130) planes of the orthorhombic unit cell. This observation is consistent with the findings acknowledged by the Joint Committee on Powder Diffraction Standards (JCPDS).…”