Rotational multimaterial printing of filaments with subvoxel control

Helical structures are ubiquitous in nature and impart unique mechanical properties and multifunctionality 1 . So far, synthetic architectures that mimic these natural systems have been fabricated by winding, twisting and braiding of individual filaments 1 – 7 , microfluidics 8 , 9 , self-shaping 1 , 10 – 13 and printing methods 14 – 17 . However, those fabrication methods are unable to simultaneously create and pattern multimaterial, helically architected filaments with subvoxel control in arbitrary two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) motifs from a broad range of materials. Towards this goal, both multimaterial 18 – 23 and rotational 24 3D printing of architected filaments have recently been reported; however, the integration of these two capabilities has yet to be realized. Here we report a rotational multimaterial 3D printing (RM-3DP) platform that enables subvoxel control over the local orientation of azimuthally heterogeneous architected filaments. By continuously rotating a multimaterial nozzle with a controlled ratio of angular-to-translational velocity, we have created helical filaments with programmable helix angle, layer thickness and interfacial area between several materials within a given cylindrical voxel. Using this integrated method, we have fabricated functional artificial muscles composed of helical dielectric elastomer actuators with high fidelity and individually addressable conductive helical channels embedded within a dielectric elastomer matrix. We have also fabricated hierarchical lattices comprising architected helical struts containing stiff springs within a compliant matrix. Our additive-manufacturing platform opens new avenues to generating multifunctional architected matter in bioinspired motifs.