3D printing of mechanically tunable and photocrosslinkable hydrogel

Abstract

Light curing based 3D printing technologies, such as DLP and SLA, are widely used to fabricate polymer-based materials for biomedical applications, since many polymeric systems utilize photocrosslinking schemes to develop materials with varying physical properties. For tissue engineering, hydrogel-based tissue constructs with microscale resolution are commonly developed by photocrosslinking biocompatible, bioactive and photocrosslinkable hydrogels encapsulated with cells. In this presentation, examples of hydrogel-based tissue constructs using 3D printing technology are introduced: (1) SLA fabrication of proangiogenic factor producing tissues as microvascular stamp, (2) DLP fabrication of scaffold-reinforced soft hydrogels, and (3) polymeric crosslinker to independently control the mechanical and diffusional properties of photocrosslinkable hydrogels.