Enhancing Interfacial Toughness in 3D-Printed Soft-Hard Interfaces by Fused Filament Fabrication

Abstract

We proposed a facile strategy for architecting the interface morphology to create tougher and stronger interfaces in additively manufactured multi-material polymer composites in this study. A sutural interfacial morphology between two dissimilar polymer phases PLA (hard) and TPU (soft) is designed and fabricated by the fused filament fabrication technique. The interfacial toughness measurements by the double cantilever beam test reveal a linear correlation between the interfacial toughness and protrusion amplitude. The proposed interfacial architecture can result in up to a 16–18-fold increase in the interfacial toughness in comparison with the baseline interface.