Hydrogel-based photopolymers for 3D printing of scaffolds by bench-top stereolithography

As an attempt to find alternatives to expensive microfabrication processes for polymer-based scaffolds for tissue engineering, in this work hydrogel-based photopolymers were engineered to be microstructured at high resolutions by low-cost stereolithography (SLA). To this end, both synthetic and natural/synthetic materials were blended with additives, directly affecting the SLA-printing resolution. Different formulations with tunable mechanical properties were selected for the rapid prototyping of biocompatible millimetric scaffolds with varied internal porosity, potentially exploitable for tissue engineering applications.