United States. HRL Labs in Malibu, California, developed a new UV photopolymerization technique to create micro-lattice (Micro-lattice) materials in a fast and scalable way.
For the development of this novel UV process, HRL was recognized with the Emerging Technology Award, awarded by RadTech (The UV and EB Technologies Association).
Micro-lattice materials are formed by harnessing a self-propagating waveguide phenomenon that can occur under certain exposure conditions. Because waveguides propagate from an exposure plane alone and can be interconnected during formation, micro-lattice materials of three-dimensional thick polymers can be formed in less than a minute with characteristics ranging from tens of microns to millimeters.
The inherent flexibility of this new method allows precise control of the architecture of the micro-lattice material, which ultimately allows the design of a material to achieve a particular property or function. The usefulness of these new materials ranges from lightweight energy absorption structures to thermal management materials, to biodegradable matrices.
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