Porous Platform Inks for Fast and High‐Resolution 3D Printing of Stationary Phases for Downstream Processing

Abstract

Purifications of biologics can be improved using 3D printed stationary phases with perfectly ordered morphology. However, limited spatial resolution and lack of porous materials have hindered application of additive manufacturing in bioprocessing. To bridge this gap, digital light processing and polymerization‐induced phase separation are combined to fabricate platform materials with bed morphology at the micrometer scale, and porous network in the nanometer scale. Four different porous inks are developed, 3D printed, and characterized in terms of their rheological behaviour, polymerization kinetics, and printing resolution. Rapid 3D printing (down to 1 h) is achieved at scale (up to 100 mL column) of porous supports (50% porosity) at high resolution (up to 50 µm for linear features and 200 µm for complex geometries). 3D‐printed gyroids are chemically functionalized with various ion exchange ligands. These are successfully challenged for i) the separation of model proteins in dynamic conditions and ii) protein capture from a clarified cell harvest, demonstrating dynamic binding capacities between 5 and 16 mg mL−1 and up to 86% purity in a single run. This work introduces a rapid and facile approach to 3D printing porous inks to fabricate perfectly ordered stationary phases for downstream processing.

Influence of porosity and microstructure on compression behavior of methacrylate polymers in flow‐through applications

“…Historically, the preparation of specific microstructures posed a challenge, largely driven by the preparation conditions. However, the rapid advancement of 3D printing has substantially changed the situation, enabling the design of virtually any microstructure [4][5][6][7][8][9] with an everexpanding array of materials being employed. Focusing solely on mechanically stable polymers, their Young's modulus spans over two orders of magnitude, ranging from below 0.1 to above 20 GPa [43].…”

“…Realizing a defined microstructure has been historically challenging, often defined primarily by the preparation procedure. However, the recent rapid development of 3D printing techniques allowed design and preparation of practically any microstructure, varying simultaneously pore size and topology as well as porosity [4][5][6][7][8][9]. The effectiveness of this approach has already been demonstrated in various applications [10,11].…”