Abstract

Biomaterials Engineering For Additive Manufacturing

Mark Tibbitt, Assistant Professor, ETH Zürich

Advances in additive manufacturing (AM) of functional biomaterials require new materials and technologies that allow for multimaterial printing beyond layer-by-layer and universal inks for bioprinting. Here, we discuss our efforts to leverage physical forces to fabricate multimaterial tissue constructs with tunable mechanical anisotropy. The approach leverages surface-tension to coat lattice frameworks with suspended liquid films that can be transformed subsequently into solid films to make multimaterial tubular constructs. The process enables direct encapsulation of cells and design of the mechanicas of the final structure. Further, the assembly is beyond layer-by-layer as the final coating step is invariant of size and voxel location is defined by the physics of the surface wetting. We will also discuss new directions in the design of complex fluids as universal inks for robotic dispensing. The materials enable shear-thinning for flow during dispensing and rapid self-healing for solidification after deposition as well as the facile incorporation of other biomaterials for increased mechanical properties or biofunctionality.