Three-dimensional Printing and Characterization of Bottling Products Fabricated Using Polylactic Acid and Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene

Abstract

Polymeric materials have outpaced all other materials used in housing, packaging, building, as well as other applications Most countries have sought aggressive mitigation measures to address the threat of global warming and the disappearance of numerous species caused by carbon emissions from the use of fossil fuels and the plastic upsurge. One of the areas currently exploited to generate products with predetermined eco-friendly products is additive manufacturing (AM) or 3-D printing. Guided by computer-aided designs (CAD), the rapid prototyping technique generates complicated yet perfectly aligned structural geometries, increasing the probability of stronger polymeric structures. The strategic focus has been on recent advancements in 3-D printing, in the context of emerging fabrication designs and mechanisms, polymeric materials, and applications. In this study, the structural, electrical, and optical features of printed bottling products were characterized using ab initio structural simulations as well as experimental methods. The density functional theory (DFT) analysis of zinc oxide nanoparticles, copper oxide nanocrystals, polylactic acid (PLA), and acrylonitrile butadiene styrene (ABS), was accomplished using the material studio (MS) software modules including Cambridge Serial Total Package (CASTEP), blends and adsorption. This study combined computational chemistry perspectives and nanotechnological improvements to PLA and ABS and consequently, 3-D printing of dispenser pumps and bottle caps. Further, the study investigated their mechanical and antimicrobial properties. The bottle caps and dispenser pumps were designed using Autodesk fusion 360 software and imported into the slicing software (Ultimaker Cura). Fused filament fabrication technique was employed to produce PLA dispenser pumps in a 3-D printer. Computer simulations of the polymers and nanomaterials were done using material studio software V.2021. Characterization of the designed dispenser pumps was done by employing various spectroscopic techniques including; SEM, NMR, FTIR, Raman spectroscopy, and XRF. PLA and ABS have band gap energies of 1.899 and 2.539 eV, respectively. This meant that PLA and ABS were both semiconductors. This was also supported by the existence of diverse orbitals from conduction and valence bands, which contributed to these materials' improved optical properties. The PLA-ZnO, PLA-CuO, ABS-ZnO, and ABS-CuO blends were determined to be immiscible. This was revealed by the positive values of the chi parameter, mixing, and free energies. PLA-ZnO, PLA-CuO, ABS-ZnO, and ABS-CuO blends also exhibited an adsorption