New strategy for enhancing in situ cell viability of cell-printing process via piezoelectric transducer-assisted three-dimensional printing

Tissue engineering has become one of the great applications of three-dimensional cell printing because of the possibility of fabricating complex cell-laden scaffolds. Three typical methods (inkjet, micro-extrusion, and laser-assisted bio-printing) have been used to fabricate structures. Of these, micro-extrusion is a comparatively easy method, but has some drawbacks such as low in situ cell viability after fabricating cell-laden structures because of the high wall shear stress in micro-sized nozzles. To overcome this shortcoming, we suggest an innovative cell printing method, which is assisted by a piezoelectric transducer (PZT). The PZT assistance in the dispensing process enhances the printing efficiency and cell viability by decreasing the wall shear stress within a nozzle because the PZT effect can lower the shear viscosity of the bioink via micro-scale vibration. In this study, 5 wt% cell-laden alginate was used as a bioink, and various PZT conditions (frequencies up to ∼400 Hz and amplitudes up to ∼40.5 μm) were simultaneously applied to the cell-printing process to examine the effectiveness of the PZT. The PZT-assisted cell-printing method was found to be highly effective in direct cell printing and could achieve cell-laden structures with high in situ cell viability.