Micro and bio-rapid prototyping using drop-on-demand 3d printing

Abstract

Rapid prototyping or referred as layered manufacturing has been widely used in fabricating 3D components from CAD data. It has evolved from liquid, plastic, powder to metal-based systems in the past two decades. Recently, 3D printing using polymeric material has caught much attention in many industry applications including in micro- and bio-fabrication due to its advantage of layer manufacturing. In this chapter, drop-on-demand (DoD) printing will be specially discussed. Among those, the novel electrohydrodynamic jet printing (E-jetting) and piezo-actuated micro-dispensing methods will be described in details. Their applications to biomedical engineering - e.g., PCL scaffolding, HA bioactive multilayered coating, and cell printing - will be presented to demonstrate its potentials.