Trends on physical understanding of bioink printability

Jun Yin,Dengke Zhao,Jingyi Liu

doi:10.1007/s42242-019-00033-y

Abstract

Recently, 3D bioprinting is developed as an emerging approach, increasingly applied to materials for healthcare; while, the precise placement of cells and materials, and the shape fidelity of forming constructs is of great importance for successful application of 3D bioprinting. Research efforts have been made to develop new bioinks as “raw materials” with better biocompatibility and biofunctionality, but the printability of bioinks is largely ignored and still needs to be carefully examined to enable robotic bioprinting. This article aims to introduce a recent published review (Appl. Phys. Rev. 2018, 5, 041304) on the evaluation of bioink printability by Huang’s research group from University of Florida. Huang et al. comprehensively reviewed the bioink printability based on the physical point of view during inkjet printing, laser printing, and microextrusion, and a series of self-consistent time scales and dimensionless quantities were utilized to physically understand and evaluate bioink printability. This article would be helpful to know the trends on physical understanding of bioink printability.

Highlights

Over the decade, additive manufacturing (3D printing) has been established as the most promising technology for material processing
The core of this review is that authors used a series of self-consistent timescales and dimensionless quantities (Table 1) to physically understand and evaluate bioink printability under different bioprinting techniques
The bioink printability during inkjet bioprinting is discussed with related dimensionless numbers and phase diagrams for Newtonian and non-Newtonian bioinks

Summary

Introduction

Additive manufacturing (3D printing) has been established as the most promising technology for material processing. Keywords Bioink · 3D bioprinting · Printability · Timescale · Dimensionless numbers · Phase diagram 2 Key Laboratory of 3D Printing Process and Equipment of Zhejiang Province, School of Mechanical Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310028, China biocompatibility and biofunctionality; the printability of bioinks is largely ignored and still needs to be carefully examined to enable robotic bioprinting.

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