Kunal Masania

Delft University of Technology | TU · Aerospace Structures and Materials (ASM)

Fused Filament Fabrication is a promising manufacturing technology for the circularity of space missions. Potential scenarios include in‐orbit applications to maximize mission life and to support long‐term exploration missions with in situ manufacturing and recycling. However, its adoption is restricted by the availability of engineering polymers d...

Multi‐material direct ink writing (DIW) of smart materials opens new possibilities for manufacturing complex‐shaped structures with embedded sensing and actuation capabilities. In this study, DIW of UV‐curable piezoelectric actuators is developed, which do not require high‐temperature sintering, allowing direct integration with structural materials...

Signaling pathways in fungi offer a profound avenue for harnessing cellular communication and have garnered considerable interest in biomaterial engineering. Fungi respond to environmental stimuli through intricate signaling networks involving biochemical and electrical pathways, yet deciphering these mechanisms remains a challenge. In this review,...

Silica-based glasses can be shaped into complex geometries using a variety of additive manufacturing technologies. While the three-dimensional printing of glasses opens unprecedented design opportunities, the development of up-scaled, reliable manufacturing processes is crucial for the broader dissemination of this technology. Here, we design and s...

Organic polymer‐based composite materials with favorable mechanical performance and functionalities are keystones to various modern industries; however, the environmental pollution stemming from their processing poses a great challenge. In this study, by finding an autonomous phase separating ability of fungal mycelium, a new material fabrication a...

Silicate glasses have played a major role as structural and functional materials in human civilization since ancient Egypt. Despite their widespread use and importance in modern society, silica glasses with complex geometries are only fabricated in automated processes using 3D printing. Here, the volumetric printing of silica‐based glasses with tun...

Microbial electrosynthesis allows the electrochemical upgrading of CO 2 . However, higher productivities and energy efficiencies are needed to reach a viability that can make the technology transformative. Here we show how a biofilm-based microbial porous cathode in a directed flow-through electrochemical system can continuously reduce CO 2 to even...

Anisotropic materials formed by living organisms possess remarkable mechanical properties due to their intricate microstructure and directional freedom. In contrast, human‐made materials face challenges in achieving similar levels of directionality due to material constraints and manufacturability. To overcome these limitations, we present an appro...

Engineered living materials (ELMs) are a novel class of functional materials that typically feature spatial confinement of living components within an inert polymer matrix to recreate biological functions. Understanding the growth and spatial configuration of cellular populations within a matrix is crucial to predicting and improving their responsi...

Dynamic building facades offer untapped potential for reducing building energy consumption and emissions. However, there is currently a lack of suitable technologies for bespoke components for new and retrofit applications. In previous work, we developed a 3D printed polymer facade component that selectively acts as a thermal conductor or insulator...

A novel approach is presented to 3D print vacuum–tight polymer components using liquid crystal polymers (LCPs). Vacuum–tight components are essential for gas storage and passive heat transfer, but traditional polymer 3D printing methods often suffer from poor interfaces between layers and high free volume, compromising vacuum integrity. By harnessi...

Chopped Tape Thermoplastic Composites (CTTCs) offer high formability and performance for complex-shaped components in the aerospace and automotive industries. However, the mesoscopic discontinuity leads to spatial variabilities and correspondingly high scatter in the elastic properties of CTTCs due to the random orientations of chopped tapes and ch...

Biological living materials, such as animal bones and plant stems, are able to self-heal, regenerate, adapt and make decisions under environmental pressures. Despite recent successful efforts to imbue synthetic materials with some of these remarkable functionalities, many emerging properties of complex adaptive systems found in biology remain unexp...

Levitation offers extreme isolation of mechanical systems from their environment, while enabling unconstrained high‐precision translation and rotation of objects. Diamagnetic levitation is one of the most attractive levitation schemes because it allows stable levitation at room temperature without the need for a continuous power supply. However, di...

Levitation offers extreme isolation of mechanical systems from their environment, while enabling unconstrained high-precision translation and rotation of objects. Diamagnetic levitation is one of the most attractive levitation schemes, because it allows stable levitation at room temperature without the need for a continuous power supply. However, d...

Biological materials such as nacre have evolved microstructural design principles that result in outstanding mechanical properties. While nacre’s design concepts have led to bio-inspired materials with enhanced fracture toughness, the microstructural features underlying the remarkable damping properties of this biological material have not yet been...

3D Printing In article number 2203878, Kunal Masania, André R. Studart, and co‐workers present a light 3D‐printable salt ink as a sacrificial template for the shaping of complex materials. This offers unprecedented shaping freedom to hard‐to‐print materials such as magnesium for resorbable bone implants, or polystyrene and polycaprolactone for 3D c...

Three‐dimensional printing is a powerful manufacturing technology for shaping materials into complex structures. While the palette of printable materials continues to expand, the rheological and chemical requisites for printing are not always easy to fulfill. Here, we report a universal manufacturing platform for shaping materials into intricate ge...

Ultra-high angular resolution in astronomy has always been an important vehicle for making fundamental discoveries. Recent results in direct imaging of the vicinity of the supermassive black hole in the nucleus of the radio galaxy M87 by the millimeter VLBI system Event Horizon Telescope and various pioneering results of the Space VLBI mission Radi...

Plant-derived natural fibres hold great potential as renewable and sustainable reinforcing elements in structural composites. However, a broader use of natural fibre composites requires further improvements in their mechanical properties, to reach performance comparable to carbon fibre-reinforced polymers. In this study, we exploit discontinuous ca...

Ultra-high angular resolution in astronomy has always been an important vehicle for making fundamental discoveries. Recent results in direct imaging of the vicinity of the supermassive black hole in the nucleus of the radio galaxy M87 by the millimeter VLBI system Event Horizon Telescope and various pioneering results of the Space VLBI mission Radi...

Biological living materials, such as animal bones and plant stems, are able to self-heal, regenerate, adapt and make decisions under environmental pressures. Despite recent successful efforts to imbue synthetic materials with some of these remarkable functionalities, many emerging properties of complex adaptive systems found in biology remain unexp...

Porous materials are relevant for a broad range of technologies from catalysis and filtration, to tissue engineering and lightweight structures. Controlling the porosity of these materials over multiple length scales often leads to enticing new functionalities and higher efficiency but has been limited by manufacturing challenges and the poor under...

Monolithic aerogels composed of crystalline nanoparticles enable photocatalysis in three dimensions, but they suffer from low mechanical stability and it is difficult to produce them with complex geometries. Here, an approach to control the geometry of the photocatalysts to optimize their photocatalytic performance by introducing carefully designed...

Fiber‐reinforced polymers are widely used as lightweight materials in aircraft, automobiles, wind turbine blades, and sports products. Despite the beneficial weight reduction achieved in such applications, these composites often suffer from poor recyclability and limited geometries. 3D printing of liquid crystal polymers into complex‐shaped all‐fib...

Vat photopolymerization 3D printing provides new opportunities for the fabrication of tissue scaffolds and medical devices. However, for the manufacturing of biodegradable elastomers, it usually requires the use of organic solvents to dissolve the solid photoinitators and achieve low resin viscosity, making this process environmentally unfriendly a...

Porous materials are relevant for a broad range of technologies from catalysis and filtration, to tissue engineering and lightweight structures. Controlling the porosity of these materials over multiple length scales often leads to enticing new functionalities and higher efficiency but has been limited by manufacturing challenges and the poor under...

The out-of-plane permeability of two glass fibre fabrics was measured by 26 institutions using silicone oil as a test fluid. Participants in this study were free to select the test procedure, specimen dimensions and data analysis method, provided that testing was carried out at three target fibre volume fractions, 46 %, 50 % and 54 %. While results...

Central airway obstruction is a life-threatening disorder causing a high physical and psychological burden to patients. Standard-of-care airway stents are silicone tubes, which provide immediate relief but are prone to migration. Thus, they require additional surgeries to be removed, which may cause tissue damage. Customized bioresorbable airway st...

p>Vat photopolymerization 3D printing provides new opportunities for the fabrication of tissue scaffolds and medical devices. However, it usually requires the use of organic solvents or diluents to dissolve the solid photoinitators, making this process environmentally unfriendly, and not optimal for biomedical applications. Here, we report bio...

This paper reports the results of an international benchmark exercise on the measurement of fibre bed compaction behaviour. The aim was to identify aspects of the test method critical to obtain reliable results and to arrive at a recommended test procedure for fibre bed compaction measurements. A glass fibre 2/2 twill weave and a biaxial (±45°) gla...

The effect of ply thickness on the notch sensitivity and bearing properties on carbon fibre reinforced polymer composites and their hybrid laminates with steel foils were studied. Laminates with ply thicknesses of 0.3 mm and 0.03 mm comprising of CFRP and hybrid laminates were manufactured and characterized using tension, open hole tension and doub...

Central airway obstruction is a life-threatening disorder causing a high physical and psychological burden to patients due to severe breathlessness and impaired quality of life. Standard-of-care airway stents are silicone tubes, which cause immediate relief, but are prone to migration, especially in growing patients, and require additional surgerie...

Structural materials combining high stiffness and damping capabilities are in high demand for passive damping applications in vibration control, precision manufacturing and resilient buildings. However, the development of enhanced passive damping materials with high stiffness at low weight has been hindered by the mutually excluding nature of these...

Three-dimensional printing of multicomponent glasses using phase-separating resins cover page

Passive spanwise bending shape-adaption has the potential to increase the efficiency and manoeuvrability of vehicles with wing-like structures. By utilisation of compression flange buckling, the in-plane stiffness can be tuned to design beams with contrasting pre-buckling and post-buckling bending stiffness. The investigated concept is experimental...

Passive spanwise bending shape-adaption has the potential to increase the efficiency and manoeuvrability of vehicles with wing-like structures. By utilisation of compression flange buckling, the in-plane stiffness can be tuned to design beams with contrasting pre-buckling and post-buckling bending stiffness. The investigated concept is experimental...

DNA storage offers substantial information density1,2,3,4,5,6,7 and exceptional half-life³. We devised a ‘DNA-of-things’ (DoT) storage architecture to produce materials with immutable memory. In a DoT framework, DNA molecules record the data, and these molecules are then encapsulated in nanometer silica beads⁸, which are fused into various material...

SI for DNA-of-things storage architecture to create materials with embedded memory

SI video of A DNA-of-things storage architecture to create materials with embedded memory

The digital fabrication of oxide glasses by three-dimensional (3D) printing represents a major paradigm shift in the way glasses are designed and manufactured, opening opportunities to explore functionalities inaccessible by current technologies. The few enticing examples of 3D printed glasses are limited in their chemical compositions and suffer f...

SI for Three-dimensional printing of multicomponent glasses using phase-separating resins

Wood is increasingly considered in sustainable structural materials development due to its hierarchical structure, including an oriented reinforcing cellulose phase combined with carbon-capturing and renewability. Top-down manufacturing techniques provide direct access to this hierarchical cellulose scaffold for use in new functional materials. For...

The development of sustainable materials from renewable resources is one of the key challenges in today's materials science. Wood has great potential to play an important role in future materials advancement due to its excellent mechanical properties and high abundance. In this regard, two novel concepts for the development of high-performance wood...

Wood is increasingly considered in sustainable structural materials development due to its hierarchical structure, including an oriented reinforcing cellulose phase combined with carbon-capturing and renewability. Top-down manufacturing techniques provide direct access to this hierarchical cellulose scaffold for use in new functional materials. For...

In article number 1903783, Martina Cihova, André R. Studart, Jörg F. Löffler, and co‐workers present a rheologically engineered salt paste as a sacrificial 3D‐printing ink for the structuring of porous magnesium (Mg) scaffolds. The ability to structure the porosity in Mg is highly attractive for its use as a resorbable bone replacement because it e...

Porosity is an essential feature in a wide range of applications that combine light weight with high surface area and tunable density. Porous materials can be easily prepared with a vast variety of chemistries using the salt‐leaching technique. However, this templating approach has so far been limited to the fabrication of structures with random po...

Natural materials such as wood exhibit high mechanical properties through cellulose structured at multiple length scales and embedded in a matrix of similar chemical structure. These hierarchical materials have inspired the design of lightweight composites composed of naturally occurring polymers. However, the close proximity of melt and decomposit...

Porosity is an essential feature in a wide range of applications that combine light weight with high surface area and tunable density. Porous materials can be easily prepared with a vast variety of chemistries using the salt-leaching technique. However, this templating approach has so far been limited to the fabrication of structures with random po...

To reduce the cycle time of structural, automotive thermoplastic composites, we investigated the potential of direct thermoplastic melt impregnation of glass fabrics using an injection moulding process. At the high pressures that occur during the process, the effect of the fabric architecture on the impregnation, compaction, volume fraction and per...

Natural fibre (NF) reinforced composites offer high specific mechanical properties and are an ecological alternative to synthetic fibre-reinforced composites. While having great potential, their use today is limited to non-structural applications, mostly with epoxy or polypropylene matrices. This work studies suitable high-performance thermoplastic...

Elegant design principles in biological materials such as stiffness gradients or sophisticated interfaces provide ingenious solutions for an efficient improvement of their mechanical properties. When materials such as wood are directly used in high‐performance applications, it is not possible to entirely profit from these optimizations because stif...

Reinforced polymer‐based composites are attractive lightweight materials for aircrafts, automobiles, and turbine blades, but still show strength and fracture toughness lower than traditional metals. An interesting approach to address this issue is to fabricate composites with structural features that absorb part of the elastic energy stored in the...

Significance Nacre, commonly called mother of pearl, is a biological composite that displays an exceptional combination of strength and noncatastrophic fracture behavior. The quantitative understanding of the structure–property correlations observed in nacre could provide powerful guidelines for the design of lightweight composite materials. By fab...

Fibre-reinforced polymer structures are often used when stiff lightweight materials are required, such as in aircraft, vehicles and biomedical implants. Despite their very high stiffness and strength1, such lightweight materials require energy- and labour-intensive fabrication processes2, exhibit typically brittle fracture and are difficult to shap...