Dual material rapid prototyping techniques for the development of biomedical devices. Part 1: Space creation

Abstract

Polymeric drug delivery devices play an important role in drug administration. However, the current polymeric drug delivery device fabrication methods lack precision. This impairs the quality of the devices, resulting in a decrease in the efficiency and effectiveness of drug delivery. The concept of building parts layer by layer out of powdered raw materials makes selective laser sintering (SLS) a suitable process for fabricating polymeric matrix drug delivery devices. The current SLS process is not capable of processing two or more materials separately. This work explores the possibilities of SLS performing a dual material operation by developing two process models. These two processes can then be integrated to form a dual or expanded multimaterial fabrication technique and act as a foundation for future work in multimaterial applications such as polymeric drug delivery device fabrication. Accordingly, two papers are presented. In this paper, Part 1, the focus is on the first process, which is a "space" creation technique in which a "space" is created by varying the density of a first representative material using heat during sintering. Three methods - one based on a vacuum and a place method, and the other two based on two variations of a laser compacting method - were tested. Results have shown that by varying the laser power during sintering, it is possible to create channels in which a second material can be deposited.