Simple and Rapid Bioink Jet Printing for Multiscale Cell Adhesion Islands

Abstract

A simple and rapid process for multiscale printing of bioinks with dot widths ranging from hundreds of microns down to 0.5 μm is presented. The process makes use of spontaneous surface charges generated pyroelectrically that are able to draw little daughter droplets directly from the free meniscus of a mother drop through jetting ("p-jet"), thus avoiding time-consuming and expensive fabrication of microstructured nozzles. Multiscale can be easily achieved by modulating the parameters of the p-jet process. Here, it is shown that the p-jet allows us to print well-defined adhesion islands where NIH-3T3 fibroblasts are constrained to live into cluster configurations ranging from 20 down to single cell level. The proposed fabrication approach can be useful for high-throughput studies on cell adhesion, cytoskeleton organization, and stem cell differentiation.

Methods of Micropatterning and Manipulation of Cells for Biomedical Applications

“…In another paper, an electrohydrodynamic jet printing (e-jet) approach was employed [ 23 ] to print bioinks such as fibronectin (FN), extracellular matrix (ECM) glycoprotein, and 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APTES) to subsequently pattern mouse embryonic fibroblast cells (NIH-3T3). This methodology uses a rapid nozzle-free jet process called pyroelectrohydrodynamic jet (p-jet), because it uses a pyroelectric effect that modifies the bioink fluid, modulating the dot sizes from 200 μm down to 0.5 μm.…”

Facile Fabrication of Electrohydrodynamic Micro‐/Nanostructures with High Aspect Ratio of a Conducting Polymer for Large‐Scale Superhydrophilic/Superhydrophobic Surfaces

“…Electrohydrodynamic patterning (EHDP) has emerged as a straightforward, cost‐effective, and contactless lithography technique for patterning micro‐/nanostructures on the polymeric films . However, EHDP can only fabricate micro‐/nanostructures with a low aspect ratio (i.e., usually less than 1) no matter how much the intensity of electric field, the air gap between the template and substrate, and the thickness of the polymeric film is.…”

Influences of Excitation on Dynamic Characteristics of Piezoelectric Micro-Jets

“…As it can achieve drop-on-demand injection, piezoelectric micro-jet technology is widely applied in various fields, such as ejecting metal nanoparticles [ 1 ], cell printing [ 2 , 3 , 4 ], color printing [ 5 ], drug delivery [ 6 , 7 , 8 ], manufacturing [ 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 , 13 ], and sensors [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ], etc. In addition, there are other alternate technologies to achieve drop-on-demand injection such as pyroelectric ink-jet printing [ 18 , 19 , 20 , 21 , 22 ], etc. In order to improve the injection performance, the influences of excitation parameters on fluid dynamic characteristics should be analyzed.…”