Developing Additively-Manufactured Functional Materials for Heat and Mass Transfer Devices

Vat photopolymerization additive manufacturing enables fabrication of highly complex geometries but remains underutilized for thermal and mass transfer applications because of limited functional printable materials and experimentally validated device designs. This dissertation advances the application of vat photopolymerization through the development of microencapsulated phase change material composites for latent thermal energy storage, zeolite-filled composites for carbon dioxide capture, and additively manufactured polymer heat exchangers for compact thermal energy storage. Experimental results demonstrated that the developed composite materials retained their intended thermal energy storage and adsorption functionality while maintaining reliable printability and dimensional fidelity. Heat exchanger testing further showed that increasing heat transfer surface area through geometric optimization produced greater improvements in thermal performance than reducing polymer wall thickness. Collectively, these findings demonstrate that vat photopolymerization can successfully integrate functional materials with complex geometries, providing practical design methodologies for next-generation thermal and mass transfer devices.