Study of gelatin as an effective energy absorbing layer for laser bioprinting

Abstract

Laser-induced forward transfer printing, also commonly known as laser printing, has been widely implemented for three-dimensional bioprinting due to its unique orifice-free nature during printing. However, the printing quality has the potential to be further improved for various laser bioprinting applications. The objectives of this study are to investigate the feasibility of using gelatin as an energy absorbing layer (EAL) material for laser bioprinting and its effects on the quality of printed constructs, bioink printability, and post-printing cell viability and process-induced DNA damage. The gelatin EAL is applied between the quartz support and the coating of build material, which is to be printed. Printing quality can be improved by EAL-assisted laser printing when using various alginate solutions (1%, 2%, and 4%) and cell-laden bioinks (2% alginate and 5 × 10⁶ cells ml^-1 in cell culture medium). The required laser fluence is also reduced due to a higher absorption coefficient of gelatin gel, in particular when to achieve the best printing type/quality. The post-printing cell viability is improved by ∼10% and DNA double-strand breaks are reduced by ∼50%. For all the build materials investigated, the gelatin EAL helps reduce the droplet size and average jet velocity.