What is it about?
We've developed a completely new way to 3D-print ice without the use of direct cooling. Instead, we spray tiny droplets of water into a vacuum chamber. The vacuum causes the water to evaporate so rapidly that it triggers freezing within half a second. Because this happens so fast, we can stack them on the fly to build almost any shape you can imagine.
Featured Image
Photo by Kevin Grieve on Unsplash
Why is it important?
By utilizing evaporative cooling rather than a traditional basal cold plate, we achieve a consistently rapid solidification rate across all layers, independent of the structure's overall height. Furthermore, 3D-printed ice serves as an excellent sacrificial template; its removal via simple melting is entirely benign and leaves no chemical residue. This makes the technique particularly well-suited for fabricating complex microfluidic networks and vascularized materials.
Perspectives
It has been an incredible journey bringing together our expertise in micro-droplets and rapid freezing to make this technology a reality. Now that the foundation is set, I am truly excited to see what future applications this will unlock.
Menno Demmenie
Van der Waals-Zeeman Institute
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Three-dimensional printing of ice structures via evaporative cooling in vacuum, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, September 2026, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences,
DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2608173123.
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