Abstract
As the biocompatible materials, hydrogels have been widely used in three- dimensional (3D) bioprinting/organ printing to load cell for tissue engineering. It is important to precisely control hydrogels deposition during printing the mimic organ structures. However, the printability of hydrogels about printing parameters is seldom addressed. In this paper, we systemically investigated the printability of hydrogels from printing lines (one dimensional, 1D structures) to printing lattices/films (two dimensional, 2D structures) and printing 3D structures with a special attention to the accurate printing. After a series of experiments, we discovered the relationships between the important factors such as air pressure, feedrate, or even printing distance and the printing quality of the expected structures. Dumbbell shape was observed in the lattice structures printing due to the hydrogel diffuses at the intersection. Collapses and fusion of adjacent layer would result in the error accumulation at Z direction which was an important fact that could cause printing failure. Finally, we successfully demonstrated a 3D printing hydrogel scaffold through harmonize with all the parameters. The cell viability after printing was compared with the casting and the results showed that our bioprinting method almost had no extra damage to the cells.
Highlights
With precisely controlled deposition of cell-laden hydrogels, organs can be mimicked better as the 3D structures determine nurture morphology and growth characteristics of cells after printing
As cell-laden is not required in the scaffold fabricating, interpenetrating polymer networks (IPN) can be realized with some additional cross-linking agents or processing such as freeze-drying
L929 mouse fibroblasts were encapsulated in hydrogel uniformly (Fig. 13b)
Summary
With precisely controlled deposition of cell-laden hydrogels, organs can be mimicked better as the 3D structures determine nurture morphology and growth characteristics of cells after printing. There are many parameters which will have great influences on printing resolution during the extrusion-based bioprinting process, such as the hydrogel fusion during printing, deformation caused by gravity, non-uniform extrusion due to the change of printing speed. It is short of research reports about systematically discussing the printability of biomaterials or the relationships between printing quality/fidelity and the process parameters. The hydrogel was the mixture of sodium alginate (SA) and gelatin with a proper rate. The structures were immersed in the calcium chloride (CaCl2) solution for the crosslinking of SA and acquiring the cell-laden hydrogel structures. We successfully demonstrated a 3D printed hydrogel structure through harmonizing all the parameters
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