Liquid-phase Integrated 3d Printed Biological Lenses for Lamellar Corneal Substitute.

Abstract

Compared to traditional biological lenses that are used to correct and repair optical systems, such as contact lenses, vision correction surgery, and corneal and lens replacement, three-dimensional (3D) printed biological lenses can be customized according to user needs. However, the layer-by-layer principle of 3D printing leads to a staircase effect, which cannot meet the critical requirements of surface quality during the manufacturing process of biological lens, particularly with soft materials. Here, a liquid-phase printing strategy and a surface tension-dependent (STD) post-processing method are proposed that use the surface tension of the liquid to reconstruct the air-liquid interface. This eliminates the staircase effect caused by the stacking of units during 3D printing. The coordinates of integrated printing enable high-accuracy shape control of soft materials. Based on this method, using a typical biological lenses as an example, the surface quality of printed lamellar corneal substitute (LCS) was improved from ±20.0μm to ±0.2μm, and the thickness feature size was reduced from ±500μm to ±150μm. It can be used to fit the curvature and thickness of the human cornea. The visible light transmittance reaches the level of the natural cornea (∼85%) and is biocompatible. Liquid-phase 3D printed biological lenses performed better in vivo in rabbit eyes than the molded group. This method can potentially boost research on artificial biological lens printing technology and has good potential for use in future clinical applications. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.