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Linking Processing Parameters and Rheology to Optimize Additive Manufacturing of k-Carrageenan Gel Systems

Additive manufacturing—in particular, three-dimensional (3D) printing—has been introduced since the late 1980s, offering a novel paradigm for engineering design and manufacturing, as it allows the fabrication of very complex structures. Additive manufacturing of hydrogels is a very popular method to...

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Autores principales: Russo Spena, Simona, Grizzuti, Nino, Tammaro, Daniele
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2022
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9407533/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36005094
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/gels8080493
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author Russo Spena, Simona
Grizzuti, Nino
Tammaro, Daniele
author_facet Russo Spena, Simona
Grizzuti, Nino
Tammaro, Daniele
author_sort Russo Spena, Simona
collection PubMed
description Additive manufacturing—in particular, three-dimensional (3D) printing—has been introduced since the late 1980s, offering a novel paradigm for engineering design and manufacturing, as it allows the fabrication of very complex structures. Additive manufacturing of hydrogels is a very popular method to produce scaffolds to be used in tissue engineering and other biomedical applications, as well as in other advanced technological areas. When printing a thermoreversible physical hydrogel, a subtle balance between thermal and rheological parameters exists. The characteristic times of the sol–gel transition, regulated by a well-defined thermal history, must be optimized with respect to the characteristic processing times. In this work, we use this thermo-rheological approach to the additive manufacturing of a physical hydrogel. A low-cost desktop 3D printer for thermoplastic polymers was suitably modified to print a 1.5 wt% solution of k-carrageenan. The thermal behavior of the printer was determined by performing experimental measurements of the temperature–time evolution during the different processing steps, from solution loading, to the extrusion of the incoming gel, to the final solidification stage. In parallel, linear viscoelastic oscillatory shear measurements were performed in a rotational rheometer under thermal histories as close as possible to those previously measured in the printing process. The comparison between the rheological results and the quality of printing under different thermal histories is presented and discussed, highlighting the main relations between rheological and processing behavior, which are helpful in the assessment and optimization of the printing conditions.
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spelling pubmed-94075332022-08-26 Linking Processing Parameters and Rheology to Optimize Additive Manufacturing of k-Carrageenan Gel Systems Russo Spena, Simona Grizzuti, Nino Tammaro, Daniele Gels Article Additive manufacturing—in particular, three-dimensional (3D) printing—has been introduced since the late 1980s, offering a novel paradigm for engineering design and manufacturing, as it allows the fabrication of very complex structures. Additive manufacturing of hydrogels is a very popular method to produce scaffolds to be used in tissue engineering and other biomedical applications, as well as in other advanced technological areas. When printing a thermoreversible physical hydrogel, a subtle balance between thermal and rheological parameters exists. The characteristic times of the sol–gel transition, regulated by a well-defined thermal history, must be optimized with respect to the characteristic processing times. In this work, we use this thermo-rheological approach to the additive manufacturing of a physical hydrogel. A low-cost desktop 3D printer for thermoplastic polymers was suitably modified to print a 1.5 wt% solution of k-carrageenan. The thermal behavior of the printer was determined by performing experimental measurements of the temperature–time evolution during the different processing steps, from solution loading, to the extrusion of the incoming gel, to the final solidification stage. In parallel, linear viscoelastic oscillatory shear measurements were performed in a rotational rheometer under thermal histories as close as possible to those previously measured in the printing process. The comparison between the rheological results and the quality of printing under different thermal histories is presented and discussed, highlighting the main relations between rheological and processing behavior, which are helpful in the assessment and optimization of the printing conditions. MDPI 2022-08-09 /pmc/articles/PMC9407533/ /pubmed/36005094 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/gels8080493 Text en © 2022 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/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/).
spellingShingle Article
Russo Spena, Simona
Grizzuti, Nino
Tammaro, Daniele
Linking Processing Parameters and Rheology to Optimize Additive Manufacturing of k-Carrageenan Gel Systems
title Linking Processing Parameters and Rheology to Optimize Additive Manufacturing of k-Carrageenan Gel Systems
title_full Linking Processing Parameters and Rheology to Optimize Additive Manufacturing of k-Carrageenan Gel Systems
title_fullStr Linking Processing Parameters and Rheology to Optimize Additive Manufacturing of k-Carrageenan Gel Systems
title_full_unstemmed Linking Processing Parameters and Rheology to Optimize Additive Manufacturing of k-Carrageenan Gel Systems
title_short Linking Processing Parameters and Rheology to Optimize Additive Manufacturing of k-Carrageenan Gel Systems
title_sort linking processing parameters and rheology to optimize additive manufacturing of k-carrageenan gel systems
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC9407533/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/36005094
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/gels8080493
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