Fabrication of Micropatterned Hydrogels Using Maskless Photopolymerization for Tissue Engineering Applications

The fabrication of tissue scaffolds/constructs has seen tremendous advancements over the past decade primarily due to the application of layered manufacturing based technologies from the rapid prototyping industry. Molding, printing and deposition technologies have enabled researchers to spatially control scaffold micro and macro structural features through the use of soft lithography solid freeform fabrication. These techniques have produced patterned scaffolds with desired mechanical and biological properties to mimic the natural tissue microenvironment. Soft lithographic techniques have produced feature sizes in ranges of 20μm and above but have limited 3D capability. Solid freeform fabrication technologies enable the production of complex 3D scaffolds due to its CAD integration but are generally limited to a 100μm feature resolutions.