85 / 2018-06-19 11:29:43

Multi-droplet Inkjet Printing of 3D Multilayered Hydrogel Structures for Soft Tissue Engineering

Multi-droplet,Inkjet printing,Multilayered hydrogel

全体主题 > i. Novel additive manufacturing mechatronic systems, in particular, 3D bioprinting platforms

Inkjet printing technique has gained increasing attentions in the field of tissue engineering for its ability of depositing tens of thousands of drops per second, producing patterns with high positional accuracy, low cost in a non-contract manner. Inkjet bioprinting offers great advantages in fabricating high-spatial-resolution biological constructs composed of living cells. However, there are still many shortcomings that limit the application of inkjet printing technology in tissue engineering, such as complex printing process, a lot of time consumption, small printing size and less material types. Accordingly, a multi-droplet piezoelectric inkjet printing system with 1024 addressable nozzles has been developed in this study. In the printing process, printhead moved and ejected the droplets after the print pattern inputted. Two kinds of ink droplets printed at the same location and cross-linked to form gel pattern. The size and resolution of gel pattern could be adjusted by injecting frequency and move speed. Cell printing experiments showed that the printing process did not significantly affect the cell viability. Large-scale complex multilayered hydrogel structures were fabricated in a few minute. Our printing method enabled high-resolution, high-speed, and freeform fabrication of large-scale multilayered cell-laden hydrogel structures. Therefore, this developed multi-droplet inkjet printing technology have a promise to manufacture the complex structures soft tissue with multilayer, various cell kinds.