Archerfish: A Retrofitted 3D Printer for High-throughput Combinatorial Experimentation via Continuous Printing
Name
D4DD00249K.pdf
Size
1.84 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
62312a22a4c80ddeaa708d0b613edb60
Author(s)
Alexander E. Siemenn, Basita Das, Eunice Aissi, Fang Sheng, Lleyton Elliott, Blake Hudspeth, Marilyn Meyers, James Serdy and Tonio Buonassisi
Date Issued
January 31, 2025
Journal
Digital Discovery
Publisher
Royal Society of Chemistry
Citation
Alexander E. Siemenn, Basita Das, Eunice Aissi, Fang Sheng, Lleyton Elliott, Blake Hudspeth, Marilyn Meyers, James Serdy and Tonio Buonassisi. 2025. "Archerfish: A Retrofitted 3D Printer for High-throughput Combinatorial Experimentation via Continuous Printing." Digital Discovery, (4).
Version
Final published version
Abstract
The maturation of 3D printing technology has enabled low-cost, rapid prototyping capabilities for mainstreaming accelerated product design. The materials research community has recognized this need, but no universally accepted rapid prototyping technique currently exists for material design. Toward this end, we develop Archerfish, a 3D printer retrofitted to dispense liquid with in situ mixing capabilities for performing high-throughput combinatorial printing (HTCP) of material compositions. Using this HTCP design, we demonstrate continuous printing throughputs of up to 250 unique compositions per minute, 100× faster than similar tools such as Opentrons that utilize stepwise printing with ex situ mixing. We validate the formation of these combinatorial “prototype” material gradients using hyperspectral image analysis and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. Furthermore, we describe hardware challenges to realizing reproducible, accurate, and precise composition gradients with continuous printing, including those related to precursor dispensing, mixing, and deposition. Despite these limitations, the continuous printing and low-cost design of Archerfish demonstrate promising accelerated materials screening results across a range of materials systems from nanoparticles to perovskites.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
Terms of Use
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial
Persistent DSpace Link
DOI of Published Version
https://doi.org/10.1039/D4DD00249K
