The CBQF/LAE Research Seminar “Rheology of 3D food printing", with Loïc Hilliou from the Institute for Polymers and Composites, University of Minho, Portugal,  will take place on October 23, 2025, at 2:30 pm, in the Classroom EBI017, in the Biotechnology Building.

Summary of presentation
Direct printing of prototypes and products through material extrusion is revolutionizing the manufacturing industry. Yet, the design of printable pastes is still a limitation as pointed out recently during a dedicated session of the International Congress on Rheology in 2023: “quantifying the main three aspects of 3D printability using appropriate rheological flow histories [designed] for a given printer…remains a huge challenge [1]”.

In this presentation, a short review of the current rheological testing of printable pastes will be given with a criticism centered on the specific rheological parameters of the direct printing process. Then, a rheological protocol aiming at mimicking the printing of a food paste in a specific commercial printer will be proposed.

[1] O. Roy et al. Which rheological tests best predict 3D printability? 10th International Congress on Rheology 2023, book of abstracts, p. 530.  

Short biography
Loïc Hilliou (ORCID 0000-0002-9936-8088) is associate researcher at the Institute for Polymers and Composites, University of Minho, Portugal, and in charge of the rheology lab of this institute. His research is about the relationships between the materials properties, their process-induced structure and rheology and the final properties of the resulting products. Recent studies focused on the extrusion of polymer based systems, on hybrid carrageenan hydrogels, on formulation of pastes for 3D printed lithium batteries, on polyhydroxyalkanoates, and the rheological understanding of extrusion-based additive manufacturing. He is currently the elected secretary of the Portuguese Society of Rheology.