UMaine and ASCC Receive R&D 100 Award Recognition
The University of Maine Advanced Structures and Composites Center (ASCC) and Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) team have been announced as a winner of the 2026 R&D 100 Award. The winning technology, a Multiplexing Extrusion System (MExS or multiplexer), was developed at ORNL as part of the SM2ART research program – an ongoing alliance between ORNL and the University of Maine researching and developing large scale additive manufacturing (LSAM) and forest derived materials. The Multiplexer technology was originally proposed as a method to increase the throughput of LSAM by combining multiple extruders into a single printer nozzle. During development, however, it was recognized that the process can also significantly improve interlayer adhesion strength as well as provide a means to directly 3D print multimaterial, multifunctional parts. These enhanced capabilities are due to the MExS precise control over internal material architecture achieved by integrating synchronized pellet-fed extruders and a proprietary multiplexing nozzle architecture. MExS is the first large-scale extrusion-based additive manufacturing system capable of simultaneously depositing multiple materials within a single bead.
The technology unlocks hybrid composite structures with tailored mechanical and functional properties, including side-by-side, ductile shell-stiff core architectures, foam-core sandwich beads, and multifunctional materials with embedded conductive or thermal pathways. MExS also empowers the use of long-fiber pultruded composite pellets currently incompatible with other extrusion-based printing systems. MExS demonstrates a fundamental advance to additive manufacturing capabilities, opening up an entirely new design space for high-performance structural and multifunctional components across national security, defense, and infrastructure sectors.
The Multiplexer was previously recognized with the 2025 Award for Composites Excellence (ACE)’s Equipment and Tooling Innovation Award at the Composites and Advanced Materials Conference (CAMX), North America’s largest event dedicated to composites and advanced materials.
ASCC researchers Dr. Habib Dagher and Dr. Susan MacKay were named as contributors to the project, along with ORNL staff members Halil L Tekinalp, Vipin Kumar, Alex Roschli, Soydan Ozcan, Jesse Heineman, Paritosh Mhatre, Umesh Marathe, Segun Isaac Talabi, Sanjita Wasti, Jay Reynolds, David Nuttall, Joshua Vaughan, and Brian Post.
The project was funded by DOE’s Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation, Advanced Materials and Manufacturing Technologies Office (AMMTO). Research for this project was sponsored by DOE as part of the SM2ART Program with the University of Maine.
Contact: MJ Gautrau mj.gautrau@maine.edu