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Formability of Printing Ink for Melt Electrowriting

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Abstract

3D printing, also called additive manufacturing, is being used increasingly in tissue engineering. However, the printing accuracy remains limited, making it difficult to prepare a tissue engineering scaffold with high precision and high porosity. Melt electrowriting (MEW) technology is based on extrusion printing, in which an extruded material is pulled by the action of an electric field, thereby reducing the fiber diameter and improving the printing accuracy. However, MEW technology imposes high requirements on the material properties, and therefore, few printing materials are currently available for use in this process. The present study investigates the characteristics and molding conditions of polycaprolactone, a commonly used printing material, as well as other materials such as poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid), poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate/polyethylene oxide, gelatin methacrylate, and hyaluronic acid methacrylate for MEW applications, and develops new and suitable inks for MEW that will provide more and better choices for constructing a bioactive scaffold in future tissue engineering research. Experiments suggest that a printing ink should have low electrical conductivity, suitable viscosity, and high curing speed for realizing successful printing.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally to this work.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Orthopaedic Surgery; Shanghai Key Laboratory of Orthopaedic Implants; Clinical and Translational Research Center for 3D Printing Technology, Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, Shanghai, 200011, China

    Yu Han  (韩 煜), Binbin Sun  (孙彬彬), Wenbo Jiang  (姜闻博) & Kerong Dai  (戴尅戎)

Authors
  1. Yu Han  (韩 煜)
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  2. Binbin Sun  (孙彬彬)
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  3. Wenbo Jiang  (姜闻博)
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  4. Kerong Dai  (戴尅戎)
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Wenbo Jiang  (姜闻博) or Kerong Dai  (戴尅戎).

Additional information

Foundation item: the National Key R&D Program of China (Nos. 2018YFB1105600 and 2018YFA0703000), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (No. 81802131), and the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (No. 2019T120347)

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Han, Y., Sun, B., Jiang, W. et al. Formability of Printing Ink for Melt Electrowriting. J. Shanghai Jiaotong Univ. (Sci.) 26, 411–415 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12204-021-2313-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12204-021-2313-5

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