Fabrication of Lindenmayer System-Based Designed Engineered Scaffolds Using UV-Maskless Photolithography
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Fabrication of Lindenmayer System-Based Designed Engineered Scaffolds Using UVMaskless Photolithography Ozlem Yasar1 and Binil Starly2 1 Department of Mechanical Engineering Technology, New York City College of Technology, Brooklyn, NY 11201, USA. 2 Department of Industrial and System Engineering, North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, USA. ABSTRACT In the field of tissue engineering, design and fabrication of precisely and spatially patterned, highly porous scaffolds/matrixes are required to guide overall shape of tissue growth and replacement. Although rapid prototyping fabrication techniques have been used to fabricate the scaffolds with desired design characteristics, controlling the interior architecture of the scaffolds has been a challenge due to Computer-aided Design (CAD) constrains. Moreover, thick engineered tissue scaffolds show inadequate success due to the limited diffusion of oxygen and nutrients to the interior part of the scaffolds. These limitations lead to improper tissue regeneration. In this work, in order to overcome these design and fabrication limitations, research has been expanded to generation of scaffolds which have inbuilt micro and nanoscale fluidic channels. Branching channels serve as material delivery paths to provide oxygen and nutrients for the cells. These channels are designed and controlled with Lindenmayer Systems (LSystems) which is an influential way to create the complex branching networks by rewriting process. In this research, through the computational modeling process, to control the thickness, length, number and the position of the channels/branches, main attributes of L-Systems algorithms are characterized and effects of algorithm parameters are investigated. After the LSystem based branching design is completed, 3D tissue scaffolds were fabricated by “UVMaskless Photolithography”. In this fabrication technique, Polyethylene (glycol) Diacrylate (PEGDA), which is biodegradable and biocompatible polymer, was used as a fabrication material. Our results show that L-System parameters can be successfully controlled to design of 3D tissue engineered scaffolds. Our fabrication results also show that L-System based designed scaffolds with internal branch structures can be fabricated layer-by-layer fashion by Maskless Photolithography. This technology can be easily applied to engineering living systems. INTRODUCTION Detailed design and precise fabrication of scaffolds are required for tissue growth and replacement. Scaffolds must also be designed and fabricated with the right bio-chemical environment to guide cells to move and proliferate within the scaffolds [1, 2]. If the proliferated cells show a healthy growth, they form functional tissues. In today’s technology, research show that large percentages of the nutrients are used up by the cells that are located at the exterior of the scaffolds. This leads the cell loss at the interior side of the scaffolds. In order to overcome this problem, natural tissue environments must be mimicked within the scaffolds. For this purpos
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