Page 35 - IJB-9-2

International Journal of Bioprinting

RESEARCH ARTICLE
Fabrication of large-scale scaffolds with

microscale features using light sheet
stereolithography

Alejandro Madrid-Sánchez*, Fabian Duerr, Yunfeng Nie, Hugo Thienpont,
Heidi Ottevaere
Department of Applied Physics and Photonics, Brussels Photonics (B-PHOT), Vrije Universiteit
Brussel and Flanders Make, Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium
(This article belongs to the Special Issue: Novel Materials and Processing for Medical 3D
Printing and Bioprinting)

Abstract
The common characteristics that make scaffolds suitable for human tissue
substitutes include high porosity, microscale features, and pores interconnectivity.
Too often, however, these characteristics are limiting factors for the scalability of
different fabrication approaches, particularly in bioprinting techniques, in which
either poor resolution, small areas, or slow processes hinder practical use in certain
applications. An excellent example is bioengineered scaffolds for wound dressings,
in which microscale pores in large surface-to-volume ratio scaffolds must be
manufactured – ideally fast, precise, and cheap, and where conventional printing
methods do not readily meet both ends. In this work, we propose an alternative
*Corresponding author: vat photopolymerization technique to fabricate centimeter-scale scaffolds without
Alejandro Madrid-Sánchez
(alejandro.madrid.sanchez@vub.be) losing resolution. We used laser beam shaping to first modify the profile of the voxels
in 3D printing, resulting in a technology we refer to as light sheet stereolithography
Citation: Madrid-Sánchez A, (LS-SLA). For proof of concept, we developed a system from commercially available
Duerr F, Nie Y, et al., 2023,
Fabrication of large-scale scaffolds off-the-shelf components to demonstrate strut thicknesses up to 12.8 ± 1.8 μm,
with microscale features using tunable pore sizes ranging from 36 μm to 150 μm, and scaffold areas up to
light sheet stereolithography. Int J 21.4 mm × 20.6 mm printed in a short time. Furthermore, the potential to fabricate
Bioprint, 9(2): 650.
https://doi.org/10.18063/ijb.v9i2.650 more complex and three-dimensional scaffolds was demonstrated with a structure
composed of six layers, each rotated by 45° with respect to the previous. Besides
Received: July 29, 2022
the demonstrated high resolution and achievable large scaffold sizes, we found that
Accepted: September 20, 2022 LS-SLA has great potential for scaling-up of applied oriented technology for tissue
Published Online: December 13, engineering applications.
2022
Copyright: © 2022 Author(s). Keywords: Scaffolds; Wound dressing; Bioprinting; Stereolithography; Light sheet; Tissue
This is an Open Access article
distributed under the terms of the engineering
Creative Commons Attribution
License, permitting distribution,
and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is
properly cited. 1. Introduction
Publisher’s Note: Whioce Artificial scaffolds have been proposed as pillars to provide structural stability and a
Publishing remains neutral with suitable environment for bone, organ, and tissue regeneration. Although scaffolds
regard to jurisdictional claims in
published maps and institutional are engineered for very different anatomical structures, they typically have physical
affiliations. and functional properties in common that make them highly relevant for multiple

Volume 9 Issue 2 (2023) 27 https://doi.org/10.18063/ijb.v9i2.650