Dr Hannes Houck wins ERC Starting Grant

Dr Hannes Houck, Department of Chemistry, has won a prestigious European Research Council (ERC) Starting GrantLink opens in a new window to explore recyclable light-activated 3D printing inks.

As part of the drive toward sustainable manufacturing, Dr. Houck has proposed a concept to transform 3D photo-printed wasted into a reusable ink for re-printing. The project, titled "DeCoDER: Decoupled Covalent Dynamic Exchange Reactions for Closed-Loop Photo-3D-printing", introduces a novel chemical framework designed to enable full recyclability of 3D printed materials—without the need for additional chemical processes.

Dr Houck explains,

"Light-based 3D printing is rapidly transforming from niche applications to more industrially relevant manufacturing of the next-generation of synthetic materials, including dental retainers, footwear and 3D printed car parts. But with this fast-growing production also comes severe concerns and environmental challenges about the large amounts of non-recyclable waste that is generated from 3D photo-printing. The current working principle of light-based 3D printing inks is based on photochemical processes that permanently harden a liquid into a solid - so-called covalently crosslinked - 3D object. This makes the ink single-use and the resulting printed materials unrecyclable. This project has the ambition to address this issue by re-designing the chemistry so that one and the same ink can be re-used for multiple re-prints, making it a closed-loop process."

Dr Houck said,

“It is a great honour to receive this prestigious ERC grant and I am very much looking forward to the enormous boost that this gives to our Photochemistry for Materials research team. With the DeCoDER project, we want to make impactful contributions and overcome fundamental challenges to the chemistry that drives light-based additive manufacturing."

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