Pusan National University team engineers 3D-printable shape-shifting ink

Traditional extrusion-based 3D printing typically fixes molecular orientation in a single direction, which restricts a component to one type of movement. A research team led by Professor Suk-kyun Ahn at Pusan National University, in collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, has bypassed this constraint. Their study, published in Nature Communications, details a method where the same ink can be programmed to produce opposite mechanical motions.

"Our work provides the first demonstration of switching molecular alignment between two orthogonal directions using a single 3D-printable smectic LCE ink," said Ahn. By fine-tuning print parameters, the team successfully created structures that maintain performance over repeated thermal cycles. Using a combination of wide-angle X-ray scattering and molecular dynamics simulations, the researchers confirmed the mechanism behind this alignment shift. The resulting printed lattices and curved structures offer a foundation for advanced haptic displays, adaptive aerodynamic surfaces, and minimally invasive biomedical tools. While the current findings rely on a single material formulation, the team anticipates this platform will evolve to support larger-scale manufacturing within the next decade.