Institute of Applied Sciences & Intelligent Systems of the National Research Council (CNR-ISASI) , Via Campi Flegrei 34, 80078 Pozzuoli (NA), Italy.
Department of Chemical Materials and Production Engineering of the University "Federico II" , P.le Tecchio 80, 80125 Naples, Italy.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2018 Jan 17;10(2):2122-2129. doi: 10.1021/acsami.7b17358. Epub 2018 Jan 4.
Electrohydrodynamic jetting is emerging as a successful technique for printing inks with resolutions well beyond those offered by conventional inkjet printers. However, the variety of printable inks is still limited to those with relatively low viscosities (typically <20 mPa s) due to nozzle clogging problems. Here, we show the possibility of printing ordered microdots of high viscous inks such as poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) by exploiting the spontaneous breakup of a thin fiber generated through nozzle-free pyro-electrospinning. The PLGA fiber is deposited onto a partially wetting surface, and the breakup is achieved simply by applying an appropriate thermal stimulation, which is able to induce polymer melting and hence a mechanism of surface area minimization due to the Plateau-Rayleigh instability. The results show that this technique is a good candidate for extending the printability at the microscale to high viscous inks, thus extending their applicability to additional applications, such as cell behavior under controlled morphological constraints.
电动力学喷射作为一种成功的打印技术，其打印分辨率远远超过传统喷墨打印机的分辨率。然而，由于喷嘴堵塞问题，可打印的油墨种类仍然仅限于那些粘度相对较低的油墨（通常<20 mPa s）。在这里，我们展示了通过无喷嘴热静电纺丝技术生成的细纤维的自发断裂，来打印高粘度油墨（如聚（乳酸-共-乙醇酸）（PLGA））有序微点的可能性。PLGA 纤维沉积在部分润湿的表面上，通过施加适当的热刺激即可实现断裂，该刺激能够诱导聚合物熔化，从而由于 Plateau-Rayleigh 不稳定性而产生表面积最小化的机制。结果表明，该技术是将微尺度的可打印性扩展到高粘度油墨的良好候选方法，从而将其适用性扩展到其他应用，例如在受控形态约束下的细胞行为。
