Fluid support | Science

Three-dimensional printing is a powerful tool for rapidly creating customized shapes, particularly out of soft materials such as polymers. However, it still can be challenging to print very soft materials such as hydrogels, which are of interest for medical devices and cell delivery, because of their low mechanical stiffness. Beh et al. overcame this by patterning a fluid-supported hydrogel precursor that provides structural support for the growing object while rinsing excess precursor from the printed regions. The authors were able to print materials spanning three orders of magnitude in stiffness and combined the printer with an extruder to perform multimaterial printing.

Biomaterials 276, 121034 (2021).