Materials with enhanced adhesive properties based on acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS)/thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) blends for fused filament fabrication (FFF)

Highlights: • Design of novel materials for fused filament fabrication with enhanced adhesive properties. • Correlation of properties at macro and micro/nanoscale. • Study of the compatibility of thermoplastic and thermoplastic elastomers by spectroscopic and microscopic analysis. • ABS-based material that allows 3D-printing without heating the platform. -- Abstract: In the current work, we prepared a novel material suitable for additive manufacturing by using acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene (ABS) copolymer as matrix and a thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) as additive. Conditions for successful printing via fused filament fabrication (FFF) were optimized for the ABS:TPU blends. Compatibility of ABS and TPU in the blends was studied by Fourier-transformed infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, showing the appearance of new supramolecular interactions via hydrogen bonding. Compositional studies were carried out by confocal Raman microscopy and atomic force microscopy (AFM), demonstrating the good compatibility between the two compounds. Mechanical and adhesive properties were studied by 3D-printing different normalized test specimens in different directions. It was shown that blends containing 10–20 wt% TPU led to enhanced adhesion between layers without loss in yield strength, while 30 wt% TPU led to a good adhesion between layers and to the printing platform when printing at room temperature.