Translation of laser-based three-dimensional printing technologies

Abstract

Laser-based three-dimensional (3D) printing methods, including laser direct-write cell printing and two-photon polymerization, have seen significant advances because of their unique photonic characteristics. Several mechanisms have been developed to increase the overall throughput of two-photon polymerization. Recent efforts to develop complex medically relevant structures using laser direct-write cell printing have also been demonstrated; for example, an ex vivo experimental platform for time-lapse imaging of cancer cell dynamics during angiogenesis within a microvascular network, which combines laser direct-write cell printing into the rat mesentery culture model; a model that simulates a 3D in vivo culture. Laser 3D printing methods hold significant promise for 3D printing of tissue engineering scaffolds, microstructured medical devices, and other medically relevant structures.

Two-photon polymerization for 3D biomedical scaffolds: Overview and updates

“…As a consequence, the two-dimensional nature of fabrication inevitably imposes geometric limitations on 3D structures made using these techniques ( LaFratta et al, 2007 ). In addition, although these techniques can produce fully 3D structures, it’s hard to provide a better resolution over a few microns ( Baldacchini et al, 2021 ).…”

“…Due to the limitations of these traditional 3D fabrication techniques, two-photon polymerization (TPP) has attracted extensive attention owing to its unique and useful characteristics since it was developed in 1997 ( Maruo et al, 1997a ; Baldacchini et al, 2021 ). Over the past 2 decades, TPP has been evolved to a practical method widely employed in many fields ( Baldacchini, 2015 ; Stampfl et al, 2016 ) and a great deal of results have been obtained such as photonic crystals, microfluidic components, micro-and nanorobots and biomedical scaffolds ( Ovsianikov et al, 2011a ; Soukoulis and Wegener, 2011 ; Wang et al, 2018 ; Sala et al, 2021 ).…”

“…TPP is based on the optical nonlinear absorption (usually a near-infrared femtosecond laser) to induce polymerization or crosslinking in the photopolymerizable materials. When a femtosecond laser is tightly focused into the material, one photoinitiator (PI) molecule simultaneously absorbs two photons to be excited to initiate local free-radical polymerization within the focus volume, it breaks free from the lay-by-lay paradigm and achieves truly 3D arbitrary structure writing ( Van Hoorick et al, 2019 ; Baldacchini et al, 2021 ). Taking advantage of the two-photon absorption (TPA) probability which is proportional to the square of the intensity and threshold character of the polymerization process, TPP can process constructs with spatial resolution less than the diffraction limit ( Fischer and Wegener, 2013 ; Fritzler and Prinz, 2019 ; Baldacchini et al, 2021 ).…”

“…When a femtosecond laser is tightly focused into the material, one photoinitiator (PI) molecule simultaneously absorbs two photons to be excited to initiate local free-radical polymerization within the focus volume, it breaks free from the lay-by-lay paradigm and achieves truly 3D arbitrary structure writing ( Van Hoorick et al, 2019 ; Baldacchini et al, 2021 ). Taking advantage of the two-photon absorption (TPA) probability which is proportional to the square of the intensity and threshold character of the polymerization process, TPP can process constructs with spatial resolution less than the diffraction limit ( Fischer and Wegener, 2013 ; Fritzler and Prinz, 2019 ; Baldacchini et al, 2021 ). The smallest resolution that is relatively easy to achieve using TPP is about several hundred nanometers and sub-100 nm resolution has been repeatedly demonstrated ( Kawata et al, 2001 ; Li et al, 2009 ; Sakellari et al, 2012 ).…”

Extrusion-Based 3D Printing for Highly Porous Alginate Materials Production

“…Based on the model developed in computer-aided design systems, using software and numerical control systems, the product is obtained by the layer-by-layer application of various materials such as metal powders [ 2 ], polymers [ 3 , 4 ], thermoplastic polymers [ 5 ], ceramics [ 6 ], photocurable resins [ 7 ], etc. Different technologies of 3D printing are used to produce products with complex geometry such as inkjet [ 8 ], extrusion [ 9 ], light [ 10 ], laser [ 11 ], and others. The use of additive technologies allows achieving the required complex geometry of the product, requiring minimal postprocessing.…”