Additive Manufacturing of High-Temperature Thermoplastic Polysulfone with Tailored Microstructure via Precipitation Printing

Current additive manufacturing processes for polymers, including material extrusion, vat photopolymerization, material jetting, and powder bed fusion, have limitations in manufacturing high-temperature thermoplastics including narrow material selection, compromised mechanical properties, and potential degradation of materials during processing. Polysulfone (PSU) is a high-temperature thermoplastic with outstanding chemical resistance, flame retardancy, and toughness. However, besides injection molding, additive manufacturing of PSU has only been achieved through extrusion or solvent-cast three-dimensional (3D) printing without obtaining high mechanical properties. In this work, precipitation printing is applied to fabricate high-temperature thermoplastics such as PSU for the first time, where tailoring of the microstructure and mechanical properties is enabled through control of solvents and printing parameters. The printed PSU can either be dense and strong with 2.47 GPa Young's modulus and 70.6 MPa tensile strength or porous and highly anisotropic. After drying at a maximum temperature of 190 °C, both the printed dense and porous PSU samples have a glass-transition temperature of about 200 °C, which allows them to be used in high-temperature environments. Thus, precipitation printing provides an alternative approach to manufacture high-temperature thermoplastics like PSU with scalability and tailorable properties.