Development of a novel micro-ablation system to realise micrometric and well-defined hydrogel structures for tissue engineering applications

Purpose – This paper aims to develop a novel micro-ablation system to realise micrometric and well-defined hydrogel structures. To engineer a tissue it is necessary to evaluate several aspects, such as cell-cell and cell-substrate interactions, its micro-architecture and mechanical stimuli that act on it. For this reason, it is important to fabricate a substrate which presents a microtopology similar to natural tissue and has chemical and mechanical properties able to promote cell functions. In this paper, well-defined hydrogel structures embedding cells were microfabricated using a purposely developed technique, micro-laser ablation, based on a thulium laser. Its working parameters (laser power emission, stepper motor velocity) were optimised to produce shaded “serpentine” pattern on a hydrogel film. Design/methodology/approach – In this study, initially, swelling/contraction tests on agarose and alginate hydrogel in different solutions of main components of cell culture medium were performed and were co...

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