Digitally Driven Aerosol Jet Printing to Enable Customisable Neuronal Guidance

Abstract

Digitally driven manufacturing technologies such as aerosol jet printing (AJP) can make a significant contribution to enabling new capabilities in the field of tissue engineering disease modeling and drug screening. AJP is an emerging non-contact and mask-less printing process which has distinct advantages over other patterning technologies as it offers versatile, high-resolution, direct-write deposition of a variety of materials on planar and non-planar surfaces. This research demonstrates the ability of AJP to print digitally controlled patterns that influence neuronal guidance. These consist of patterned poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)-poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) tracks on both glass and poly(potassium 3-sulfopropyl methacrylate) (PKSPMA) coated glass surfaces, promoting selective adhesion of SH-SY5Y neuroblastoma cells. The cell attractive patterns had a maximum height ≥0.2 μm, width and half height ≥15 μm, Ra = 3.5 nm, and RMS = 4.1. The developed biocompatible PEDOT:PSS ink was shown to promote adhesion, growth and differentiation of SH-SY5Y neuronal cells. SH-SY5Y cells cultured directly onto these features exhibited increased nuclei and neuronal alignment on both substrates. In addition, the cell adhesion to the substrate was selective when cultured onto the PKSPMA surfaces resulting in a highly organized neural pattern. This demonstrated the ability to rapidly and flexibly realize intricate and accurate cell patterns by a computer controlled process.

A digitally driven manufacturing process for high resolution patterning of cell formations

“…Previously it was found that the geometry of linear tracks is predominantly affected by these gas flow rates (Smith et al 2018 , Capel et al 2021 ), confirming results by Mahajan et al . ( 2013 ).…”

“…A solution containing PEDOT:PSS (Clevios PH1000TM, Heraeus Holding) was diluted with Ethylene Glycol (20% v/v, > 99.8%, Sigma Aldrich) and 3-glycidyloxypropyl)trimethoxysilane (GOPS) (0.2% v/v, > 98%, Sigma Aldrich) and used as the print material (Capel et al 2021 ). PEDOT:PSS particles are suspended in the solvents, so the suspension was ultrasonically agitated for 10 min prior to printing to break up agglomerates and disperse the particles.…”

Micro-scale aerosol jet printing of superparamagnetic Fe3O4 nanoparticle patterns

“…Within this framework, they evidenced that the thickness of the printed line increase with increasing FR, while the width decrease. Our previous work on the aerosol jet printing of PEDOT:PSS micro-features also confirmed these results 17 . In this work, the carrier and the sheath flow rates were varied to print lines with different widths to present the capability of the system (see “ Materials and methods ” section for details).…”

“…A strong linear relationship (R 2 = 0.9995) between line width at the base and half height (Fig. 4d) was found, suggesting that the printed lines have a uniform geometry and a consistent print profile across the different line sizes 17 . From width measurements, it was determined that the aerosol-jet set up is capable of printing magnetic patterns with well-defined edges with feature sizes down to 17 μm.…”

“…This research proposes the use of Aerosol Jet Printing (AJP) as an enabling manufacturing process which could introduce new possibilities of producing magnetic patterns at micron-scales onto different substrates. AJP is an emerging contactless direct write technology that have been explored in a wide range of applications for the digital manufacturing of electronic components, actuators, sensors and structured surfaces for tissue engineering [13][14][15][16][17] . The working principle of AJP is the use of a focussed aerosol for the high-resolution printing (down to 10 μm) of a variety of materials at nozzle-substrate offsets of 1-5 mm, allowing for patterning over existing structures, different surface textures, across curved surfaces, and into channels [18][19][20] .…”