The new 3-D printing method can start making small medical devices for the body

Researchers at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (G (NISIT)) have developed a new method of 3-D-printing gels and other soft materials. Because of this, the new method could begin the production of soft small medical devices such as drug delivery systems or flexible electrodes that can be inserted into the human body.

A standard D-D printer builds solid structures by making a sheet of material ખાસ specifically plastic or rubber અને and leveling it like a lasagna until it becomes a complete object.

Using a D-printer to create an object object made of gel is “a bit more of a delicate cooking process,” said NIST researcher Andrei Kolmakov. In the standard method, the 3-D printer chamber is filled with a long-chain polymer broth – long groups of molecules bound together માં dissolved in water. Then “spices” are added – special molecules that are sensitive to light. When light from a 3-D printer activates those specific molecules, they stitch the polymer chains together so that they form a fluffy weblook structure. The scaffolding, still surrounded by liquid water, is gel.

Typically, modern 3-D gel printers have used ultraviolet or visible laser light to initiate the formation of the gel scaffold. However, using the electron or X-ray beam, Kolmakov and his colleagues focused their attention on a different 3-D-printing technique for fabricating gels. Because this type of radiation has higher energy, or shorter wavelengths, than ultraviolet and visible light, these beams can be more tight focused and therefore generate interest in finer structural detail. Such detail is required for tissue engineering and many other medical and biological applications. Electrons and X-rays offer another advantage: they do not require a set of special molecules to initiate the formation of gels.

But currently, these rigidly focused, short-wavelength radiation scanning electron microscopes and X-ray microscopes – can only operate in a vacuum. That is a problem because in a vacuum each chamber evaporates instead of forming a liquid gel.

Kolmakov and his colleagues at NIST and Italy’s Ultra Synchrotron Trust resolved the issue and demonstrated 3-D gel printing in liquids by placing a thin sheet of silicone nitride between the vacuum and the liquid chamber – the ultrathin barrier. The thin sheet protects the liquid from evaporation (as it would normally do in a vacuum) but allows X-rays and electrons to enter the liquid. This method will enable the team to use a 3-D-printing approach to create gels with structures as small as 100 nanometers (nm) – 1000 times thinner than human hair. By improving their method, researchers expect to print structures on gels as small as the size of a virus, as small as 50 nm.

Some future creations made with this approach include flexible injectable electrodes for monitoring brain activity, virus detection biosensors, soft micro-robots and structures that can mimic and interact with living cells and provide a means for their growth.

“We are bringing new tools – electron beams and X-rays working in liquids – to 3-D printing of soft materials,” Kolmkov said. He and his associates 16 September. 16 described his work in an article posted online ACS Nano.

This story is republished courtesy of NIST. Read the original story here.