Jet-powered microscaffolds for tissue growth

In some biological applications, cells need to be “seeded” into an artificial structure that provides mechanical support while allowing the cells to grow and function in their own microenvironment. Often, scaffolds are made using lithographic techniques on polymeric materials, but the required instrumentation is expensive. In recent years ink-jet printing has been used; the ink-jet droplets are usually 100 μm across or larger, making architectures smaller than that difficult to fabricate. Now Suwan Jayasinghe (University College London) and Alice Sullivan (Queen Mary, University of London) have found bioscaffolds to be a surprising application of the industrial electrospraying technique. In ES, the chemical or material of interest is suspended in a solvent and the solution is drawn out of a needle by a strong electric field. While being accelerated toward an electrode, the drops shrink and fission as the solvent evaporates. ES is used not only to paint metal surfaces but...