Wetting for self-healing and electrowetting for additive manufacturing

Advanced additive manufacturing actively widens its tool box of wettability-related phenomena to be used in production of new items. Novel self-healing engineering materials incorporate vascular networks with two types of nanochannels: the one containing a resin monomer, whereas another one — a curing agent. If such nanocomposites are damaged locally, both types of channels are locally broken, and they release resin monomer and curing agent droplets. These droplets spread by wettability over the nanotextured matrix, touch each other, and coalesce, which triggers polymerization reaction and crack stitching. Wettability-facilitated droplet spreading is accompanied by liquid imbibition in the pores in the nanofiber network. Such process peculiarities are in focus in the present review. An additional process relevant in direct writing and 3D printing is electrowetting (EW). It stems from the change in the contact angle in response to the electric polarization of dielectric substrates. EW allows movement of droplets on horizontal, vertical, and inverse surfaces, which can significantly facilitate the existing direct writing and 3D printing technologies. Accordingly, EW is also in focus in the present review.