POS7-1175
A Food-Compatible Photocurable Soy Protein Resin for DLP 3D Printing
Topic
S7. Innovations in Polymeric Composites: From Design and Processing to Industrial Applications
When and Where
Sep 30, 2026
08:30 - 09:30
Room 301 (Grand Ballroom)
Session Chairs
Heesuk KIM
Jinhye BAE
Presenter(s)
Kisung Kim (Gachon University)
Co-Author(s)
Abstract
As population growth and climate change raise concerns about food-supply sustainability, alternative foods are gaining importance. A key challenge in their development is reproducing a texture close to that of real food, which is strongly governed by the food's internal microstructure. The characteristic texture of muscle foods such as scallop originates from a fine, anisotropic internal structure that conventional food-shaping methods, including nozzle-based extrusion printing, cannot reproduce with sufficient precision. Digital light processing (DLP) 3D printing forms high-resolution structures using projected light patterns, but its use in food has been limited by the poor food-compatibility of conventional photoinitiators (LAP, TPO, BAPO) and the lack of a suitable food-compatible photocurable resin. To address this, we developed a photocurable resin formulated entirely from food-compatible ingredients. Soy protein isolate (SPI) was reacted with methacrylic anhydride to introduce photo-crosslinkable methacryloyl groups (SPI-MA), and curing was induced under 405 nm light using a food-compatible photoinitiating system of riboflavin 5′-phosphate and L-arginine. Under the projected DLP light pattern, the resin showed spatially selective curing and was printed into the designed shapes, reproducing a perforated disk with 1 mm pillars spaced 0.41 mm apart at a layer thickness of 50 ㎛ and a total height of 2 mm. This work shows the potential to extend photocurable 3D printing, previously reliant on synthetic photoinitiators, to food materials, and establishes a plant-protein photocurable resin platform for reconstructing the food microstructures that govern texture.
Keywords: Soy protein isolate, methacrylation, photocuring, DLP 3D printing, riboflavin phosphate, Photocurable resin
Keywords: Soy protein isolate, methacrylation, photocuring, DLP 3D printing, riboflavin phosphate, Photocurable resin
