Designing Biomaterials for 3D Printing.
Three dimensional (3D) printing is becoming an increasingly common technique to fabricate scaffolds and devices for tissue engineering applications. This is due to the potential of 3D printing to provide patient specific designs, high structural complexity, rapid on demand fabrication at a low cost. One of the major bottlenecks that limits the widespread acceptance of 3D printing in biomanufacturing is the lack of diversity in "biomaterial inks" Printability of a biomaterial is determined by the printing technique. Although a wide range of biomaterial inks including polymers, ceramics, hydrogels and composites have been developed, the field is still struggling with processing of these materials into self supporting devices with tunable mechanics, degradation, and bioactivity. This review aims to highlight the past and recent advances in biomaterial ink development and design considerations moving forward. A brief overview of 3D printing technologies focusing on ink design parameters is also included.
ACS biomaterials science engineering