Chemical synthesis via 3D printing?
chemistry.stackexchange.com
chemistry.stackexchange.com
There are automated reaction/deposition systems that are used in combinatorial chemistry. Many of them are in use in the pharmaceutical industry, or solid state chemistry.
I built a small multi-reactor for high temperature synthesis with ("only") 8 reaction tubes myself, and had a bit of hassle when it came to the injection and stirring. As such, I think the 3D printing technology with its fine control for delivery will definatly have some application in this field, as pointed out in the comment in stackexchange.
As with the the microsystem based synthesis which uses micro-sized reaction volumes/object features to enhance e.g. removal of thermal energy in an reaction, this technology has good potential to find some niche application, e.g. screening of optimal reaction conditions. However, note that these optimization procedures have to be done again when scaling synthesis up to the synthesis of larger volumes.
>> General reaction container
Another article i read about this , talks about getting some short list of base materials which you can synthesize many materials from. Is that theoretically possible (let's assume they build a variety of synthesis methods and exchangeable catalysts on the reaction vessel ) ?
[1]An interesting more detailed article about this http://www.rsc.org/chemistryworld/news/2012/april/3d-printer...
Funky. If I still were in my phd slavery time, I would try to have a go with a 3D printing project. Thank you for pointing out the literature. Do you have more to show?
> talks about getting some short list of base materials > which you can synthesize many materials from. > Is that theoretically possible
Why not. But I would add the assumption that you get a repertoire of click reactions [A], otherwise optimization of reaction condications in regard to thermodynamics/kinetics/byproducts/etc might kill your 3D printing lab fun.
The question is what the main benefit of the 3D infrastructure is when it comes to chemical synthesis. On a first glimpse, producing your own chemicals in your printer sounds like fun. But why not buy them in the first place? Once a synthetic route is explored, chemical manufacturers take over the task to scale up production or produce chemicals on demand.
Unlike mentioned in your article [1], solid phase synthesis is already in use in industry and blurs the line between reaction container and reaction.
Let me make some random guesses: There is definalty huge potential in 3D printing once it leaves the current domain of base materials. One could print solid state batteries, logic circuits (organic electronics), matrix like containers for combinatorial chemistry. I think there is a huge benefit materials research / prototyping when it comes to 3D printing.
However, the problem with chemistry is that many parameters play an important role in reactions e.g. the effectivity of stirring, solvent choice - and that solid analytics are a must-have. After all, every chemist has had a 'Monday Morning' reaction.
[A] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Click_chemistryClick reactions are interesting.
What's the point of this ? first, it's offering places with lack of solid access to medicines and materials a good source.
Second, it has similar motivations to any 3d printer as a research tool : easy copying and sharing and faster innovation.
[1]http://www.theguardian.com/science/2012/jul/21/chemputer-tha...
thanks for your links/lit.
I was not trying to to stomp down any intiative towards employing 3D printers in chemistry - on the contrary, I find these are very interesting tools that I was watching with envy in my final years of university life. I just wanted to point out some of the problems that can not be solved easily by just making use of a 3D printer:
1. control of reaction
2. purification
3. analytics
Not sure what the current resolution of the printers is - I was following this exciting idea for some time, but until now I could not figure out a concept that would allow to bootstrap a 3D printing system that provides some interest value proposition to a specific customer segment. I guess we will see many more projects with 3D printers in the respective journals.
As for medicine, I would not gulp any stuff that has been made by a 3D printing system - quality control is the one of the things the pharmaceutical does right. It costs a lot of $ but is necessary in order to be confident enough that the compounds you are making are really the compounds you wanted to create.
But, I did find a nicely detailed build report from a lab who converted an Epson piezoelectric printhead to use for step-wise oligonucleotide array synthesis - 1 "color" for each DNA base (I think they used a 5-ink head but I can't remember what the 5th was for).
This was all off the shell stuff, with the addition of a laser photogate to detect droplet formation (which can fail). Very cool.
I remember having read some papers regarding the modification of InkJet Systems for combinatorial chemistry. But papers are always one thing, out-of-ivory-tower application another.
Do you have any contact details? I could not find them in your profile.