Microfluidics: A New Layer of Control for Extrusion-Based 3D Printing

Advances in 3D printing have enabled the use of this technology in a growing number of fields, and have started to spark the interest of biologists. Having the particularity of being cell friendly and allowing multimaterial deposition, extrusion-based 3D printing has been shown to be the method of choice for bioprinting. However as biologically relevant constructs often need to be of high resolution and high complexity, new methods are needed, to provide an improved level of control on the deposited biomaterials. In this paper, we demonstrate how microfluidics can be used to add functions to extrusion 3D printers, which widens their field of application. Micromixers can be added to print heads to perform the last-second mixing of multiple components just before resin dispensing, which can be used for the deposition of new polymeric or composite materials, as well as for bioprinting new materials with tailored properties. The integration of micro-concentrators in the print heads allows a significant increase in cell concentration in bioprinting. The addition of rapid microfluidic switching as well as resolution increase through flow focusing are also demonstrated. Those elementary implementations of microfluidic functions for 3D printing pave the way for more complex applications enabling new prospects in 3D printing.

[1]  T. K. Kundra,et al.  Additive Manufacturing Technologies , 2018 .

[2]  Ming-Chuan Leu,et al.  Additive manufacturing: technology, applications and research needs , 2013, Frontiers of Mechanical Engineering.

[3]  L. Zheng,et al.  Two-Fluid Mixing in a Microchannel , 2003 .

[4]  Raffaella Casadei,et al.  An estimation of the number of cells in the human body , 2013, Annals of human biology.

[5]  A virtual valve for smooth contamination-free flow switching. , 2007, Lab on a chip.

[6]  Anthony Atala,et al.  3D bioprinting of tissues and organs , 2014, Nature Biotechnology.

[7]  W. Yeong,et al.  Metallic powder-bed based 3D printing of cellular scaffolds for orthopaedic implants: A state-of-the-art review on manufacturing, topological design, mechanical properties and biocompatibility. , 2017, Materials science & engineering. C, Materials for biological applications.

[8]  Marco Costantini,et al.  Microfluidic Bioprinting of Heterogeneous 3D Tissue Constructs. , 2017, Methods in molecular biology.

[9]  Marcel A. Heinrich,et al.  Rapid Continuous Multimaterial Extrusion Bioprinting , 2017, Advanced materials.

[10]  Ali Khademhosseini,et al.  3D Bioprinting for Tissue and Organ Fabrication , 2016, Annals of Biomedical Engineering.

[11]  Mehmet Toner,et al.  Inertial focusing in microfluidics. , 2014, Annual review of biomedical engineering.

[12]  V. Constantinescu.  Laminar viscous flow , 1995 .

[13]  Freek Bos,et al.  3D concrete printing – a structural engineering perspective , 2018 .

[14]  Robert J. Strong,et al.  A review of melt extrusion additive manufacturing processes: I. Process design and modeling , 2014 .

[15]  Christian Vogt,et al.  Rapid prototyping of small size objects , 2000 .

[16]  Microfluidic enabled rapid bioprinting of hydrogel μfiber based porous constructs , 2017, 2017 IEEE 30th International Conference on Micro Electro Mechanical Systems (MEMS).

[17]  B O Palsson,et al.  Effective intercellular communication distances are determined by the relative time constants for cyto/chemokine secretion and diffusion. , 1997, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.

[18]  I. Mezić,et al.  Chaotic Mixer for Microchannels , 2002, Science.

[19]  Bin Duan,et al.  State-of-the-Art Review of 3D Bioprinting for Cardiovascular Tissue Engineering , 2016, Annals of Biomedical Engineering.

[20]  Thomas J Ober,et al.  Microfluidic Printheads for Multimaterial 3D Printing of Viscoelastic Inks , 2015, Advanced materials.

[21]  Hermann Seitz,et al.  A review on 3D micro-additive manufacturing technologies , 2012, The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology.

[22]  Fachrichtung,et al.  MEASUREMENT AND CALCULATIONS OF LAMINAR FLOW IN A NINETY DEGREE BIFURCATION , 2003 .

[23]  Wei Sun,et al.  Bioprinting three-dimensional cell-laden tissue constructs with controllable degradation , 2016, Scientific Reports.

[24]  Hugh Smyth,et al.  3D Printing technologies for drug delivery: a review , 2016, Drug development and industrial pharmacy.

[25]  Albert Folch,et al.  3D-Printed Microfluidics. , 2016, Angewandte Chemie.

[26]  Antonio Jimeno-Morenilla,et al.  3D printing of functional anatomical insoles , 2018, Comput. Ind..

[27]  Dong-Woo Cho,et al.  Biomaterials-based 3D cell printing for next-generation therapeutics and diagnostics. , 2018, Biomaterials.

[28]  D. Achilias,et al.  Reactivity of Benzoyl Peroxide/Amine System as an Initiator for the Free Radical Polymerization of Dental and Orthopaedic Dimethacrylate Monomers: Effect of the Amine and Monomer Chemical Structure , 2006 .

[29]  Abbas Z. Kouzani,et al.  3D printing of a pavlova , 2016, 2016 IEEE Region 10 Conference (TENCON).

[30]  Dongxu Ke,et al.  Additive manufacturing of biomaterials. , 2018, Progress in materials science.

[31]  D. Liepsch,et al.  Measurement and calculations of laminar flow in a ninety degree bifurcation. , 1982, Journal of biomechanics.

[32]  P. Renaud,et al.  Pore Size Manipulation in 3D Printed Cryogels Enables Selective Cell Seeding , 2018 .

[33]  T. Boland,et al.  Inkjet printing for high-throughput cell patterning. , 2004, Biomaterials.

[34]  Brian N. Turner,et al.  A review of melt extrusion additive manufacturing processes: II. Materials, dimensional accuracy, and surface roughness , 2015 .

[35]  Johan U. Lind,et al.  Instrumented cardiac microphysiological devices via multimaterial three-dimensional printing , 2016 .

[36]  K H Kang,et al.  Rapid 3D printing of anatomically accurate and mechanically heterogeneous aortic valve hydrogel scaffolds , 2012, Biofabrication.

[37]  Ibrahim T. Ozbolat,et al.  The bioink: A comprehensive review on bioprintable materials. , 2017, Biotechnology advances.

[38]  Smadar Cohen,et al.  Liver tissue engineering within alginate scaffolds: effects of cell-seeding density on hepatocyte viability, morphology, and function. , 2003, Tissue engineering.

[39]  L. Fu,et al.  Microfluidic Mixing: A Review , 2011, International journal of molecular sciences.

[40]  Elisabetta A. Matsumoto,et al.  Biomimetic 4D printing. , 2016, Nature materials.

[41]  M. Yamada,et al.  Hydrodynamic filtration for on-chip particle concentration and classification utilizing microfluidics. , 2005, Lab on a chip.

[42]  Thomas Braschler,et al.  Microdrop Printing of Hydrogel Bioinks into 3D Tissue‐Like Geometries , 2012, Advanced materials.

[43]  Frederik L. Giesel,et al.  3D printing based on imaging data: review of medical applications , 2010, International Journal of Computer Assisted Radiology and Surgery.

[44]  Ali Khademhosseini,et al.  Direct 3D bioprinting of perfusable vascular constructs using a blend bioink. , 2016, Biomaterials.

[45]  I. Todd.  Metallurgy: Printing steels. , 2017, Nature materials.

[46]  Yi Zhang,et al.  Three-dimensional-printing for microfluidics or the other way around? , 2019, International journal of bioprinting.

[47]  Yong Liu,et al.  3D printing of smart materials: A review on recent progresses in 4D printing , 2015 .

[48]  Ian Gibson,et al.  Additive manufacturing technologies : 3D printing, rapid prototyping, and direct digital manufacturing , 2015 .

[49]  H. Kodama.  Automatic method for fabricating a three‐dimensional plastic model with photo‐hardening polymer , 1981 .

[50]  Amir A. Zadpoor,et al.  Additive Manufacturing of Biomaterials, Tissues, and Organs , 2016, Annals of Biomedical Engineering.

[51]  Mark A. Skylar-Scott,et al.  Three-dimensional bioprinting of thick vascularized tissues , 2016, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

[52]  R. Austin,et al.  Hydrodynamic Focusing on a Silicon Chip: Mixing Nanoliters in Microseconds , 1998 .

[53]  Z. Eckel,et al.  Additive manufacturing of polymer-derived ceramics , 2016, Science.

[54]  Lei Wang,et al.  Additive Manufacturing for Aerospace Application , 2015 .

[55]  Savas Tasoglu,et al.  Editorial for the Special Issue on 3D Printed Microfluidic Devices , 2018, Micromachines.

[56]  Naga Sai Gopi K Devaraju,et al.  Pressure driven digital logic in PDMS based microfluidic devices fabricated by multilayer soft lithography. , 2012, Lab on a chip.

[57]  P. Gascoyne,et al.  Particle separation by dielectrophoresis , 2002, Electrophoresis.

[58]  S. Pannala,et al.  The metallurgy and processing science of metal additive manufacturing , 2016 .

[59]  Ibrahim T. Ozbolat,et al.  Three-dimensional bioprinting using self-assembling scalable scaffold-free “tissue strands” as a new bioink , 2016, Scientific Reports.

[60]  M. Yamada,et al.  In-channel focusing of flowing microparticles utilizing hydrodynamic filtration , 2009 .

[61]  Junjie Zhu,et al.  Particle focusing in microfluidic devices , 2010 .

[62]  Thomas Braschler,et al.  A miniaturized continuous dielectrophoretic cell sorter and its applications. , 2010, Biomicrofluidics.