Details

Autor(en) / Beteiligte

• Symes, Mark D
• Kitson, Philip J
• Yan, Jun
• Richmond, Craig J
• Cooper, Geoffrey J T
• Bowman, Richard W
• Vilbrandt, Turlif
• Cronin, Leroy

Titel

Integrated 3D-printed reactionware for chemical synthesis and analysis

Ist Teil von

• Nature chemistry, 2012-04, Vol.4 (5), p.349-354

Ort / Verlag

England

Erscheinungsjahr

2012

Quelle

MEDLINE

Beschreibungen/Notizen

• Three-dimensional (3D) printing has the potential to transform science and technology by creating bespoke, low-cost appliances that previously required dedicated facilities to make. An attractive, but unexplored, application is to use a 3D printer to initiate chemical reactions by printing the reagents directly into a 3D reactionware matrix, and so put reactionware design, construction and operation under digital control. Here, using a low-cost 3D printer and open-source design software we produced reactionware for organic and inorganic synthesis, which included printed-in catalysts and other architectures with printed-in components for electrochemical and spectroscopic analysis. This enabled reactions to be monitored in situ so that different reactionware architectures could be screened for their efficacy for a given process, with a digital feedback mechanism for device optimization. Furthermore, solely by modifying reactionware architecture, reaction outcomes can be altered. Taken together, this approach constitutes a relatively cheap, automated and reconfigurable chemical discovery platform that makes techniques from chemical engineering accessible to typical synthetic laboratories.