Polymers · 5 authors, 3 centres
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This narrative review summarizes vat photopolymerization techniques (SLA, DLP, volumetric printing) for tissue engineering, covering photopolymerization mechanisms, biomaterials, and scaffold fabrication for various tissues. It identifies high-resolution-versus-speed trade-offs, limited multimaterial capability, and bioresin constraints as key challenges for future development.
This narrative review examines vat photopolymerization (VP) techniques, including SLA, DLP, CLIP, HARP, and CLA, for fabricating cell-laden scaffolds in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. The authors describe photopolymerization mechanisms and commonly used biomaterials, noting that natural biomaterials such as gelatin, hyaluronic acid, chitosan, and sodium alginate are widely used due to excellent biocompatibility, non-immunogenicity, and biodegradability, while synthetic biomaterials offer better mechanical strength but are less biocompatible. Applications to liver, skin, bone, and cartilage scaffold fabrication are discussed. The review identifies several challenges: the trade-off between resolution and printing speed, difficulty achieving multimaterial printing with VP compared to extrusion and inkjet bioprinting, and limited availability of bioresins with low viscosity and sufficient transparency for light penetration. Implications are limited to identifying future research directions.
