Evaluation of Various Types of Alginate Inks for Light-Mediated Extrusion 3D Printing
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Date
2024-04-04Author
Zoco de la Fuente, Aitana
García García, Ane
Pérez Álvarez, Leyre
Moreno Benitez, María Isabel
Larrea Sebal, Asier
Martín Plágaro, César Augusto
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Polymers 16(7) : (2024) // Article ID 986
Abstract
Naturally derived biopolymers modifying or combining with other components are excellent candidates to promote the full potential of additive manufacturing in biomedicine, cosmetics, and the food industry. This work aims to develop new photo-cross-linkable alginate-based inks for extrusion 3D printing. Specifically, this work is focused on the effect of the addition of cross-linkers with different chemical structures (polyethylene glycol diacrylate (PEGDA), N,N′-methylenebisacrylamide (NMBA), and acrylic acid (AA)) in the potential printability and physical properties of methacrylated alginate (AlgMe) hydrogels. Although all inks showed maximum photo-curing conversions and gelation times less than 2 min, only those structures printed with the inks incorporating cross-linking agents with flexible and long chain structure (PEGDA and AA) displayed acceptable size accuracy (~0.4–0.5) and printing index (Pr ~1.00). The addition of these cross-linking agents leads to higher Young’s moduli (from 1.6 to 2.0–2.6 KPa) in the hydrogels, and their different chemical structures results in variations in their mechanical and rheological properties. However, similar swelling ability (~15 swelling factor), degradability (~45 days 100% weight loss), and cytocompatibility (~100%) were assessed in all the systems, which is of great importance for the final applicability of these hydrogels.
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Except where otherwise noted, this item's license is described as © 2024 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/).