Events

Composites and Hybrids for 3D Printing in Tissue Engineering By Professor Min Wang, University of Hong Kong

Date: Tuesday 31 May 2022 15:00 - 16:00

Location: SEMS Seminar Room (and Teams)

Abstract

3D printing provides a powerful manufacturing platform for different industries and has been increasingly used in the tissue engineering field. 3D printing comprises an array of technologies: liquid-based, filament- or paste-based, and powder-based technologies. Using smart materials and with innovative designs, 4D printing produces dynamic structures that can change their shape, property, and/or function under external stimulus/stimuli. Using inks that contain live cells, 3D/4D bioprinting creates living structures for different purposes (cancer tissue models, tissue engineering, organ-on-a-chip, etc.) in the biomedical field. 3D printing technologies greatly improve our ability to fabricate a variety of complex and customized biomedical products accurately, efficiently, economically and with high reproducibility. However, finding or developing suitable biomaterials appears to be a bottleneck for the advancement of 3D/4D printing in biomedical engineering (J.Lai, C.Wang, M.Wang, “3D Printing in Biomedical Engineering: Processes, Materials and Applications”, Applied Physics Review, 8 (2021), 021322, 69pp). Different 3D printing technologies have different requirements for the materials/inks to be used, and in most situations these requirements are highly demanding. The requirements for 3D printing materials/inks in tissue engineering include printability, biocompatibility, biodegradation properties, and mechanical properties of printed products. Biocompatibility is of paramount importance for a material in tissue engineering applications but it becomes highly important only when the material can be 3D printed where 3D printing is employed for structure formation. We have investigated / are investigating several 3D printing technologies, such as selective laser sintering (SLS), cryogenic extrusion 3D printing, and digital light projection (DLP), for fabricating advanced tissue engineering scaffolds and cell/scaffold constructs for the regeneration of bone, osteochondral tissue, blood vessel, etc. This talk will give an overview of our work in developing different materials for 3D/4D printing/bioprinting in tissue engineering. It will provide design guidelines and practical approaches in developing composites and hybrids for biomedical 3D/4D printing.