Extrusion-Based 3D Printing for Highly Porous Alginate Materials Production

Three-dimensional (3D) printing is a promising technology for solving a wide range of problems: regenerative medicine, tissue engineering, chemistry, etc. One of the potential applications of additive technologies is the production of highly porous structures with complex geometries, while printing is carried out using gel-like materials. However, the implementation of precise gel printing is a difficult task due to the high requirements for “ink”. In this paper, we propose the use of gel-like materials based on sodium alginate as “ink” for the implementation of the developed technology of extrusion-based 3D printing. Rheological studies were carried out for the developed alginate ink compositions. The optimal rheological properties are gel-like materials based on 2 wt% sodium alginate and 0.2 wt% calcium chloride. The 3D-printed structures with complex geometry were successfully dried using supercritical drying. The resulting aerogels have a high specific surface area (from 350 to 422 m(2)/g) and a high pore volume (from 3 to 3.78 cm(3)/g).