3D-printed nozzles could revolutionize drug and self-healing material manufacturing — MIT-developed triaxial electrospray design makes cleanroom fabrication optional

3D printing is quickly becoming embedded in most every manufacturing process these days, and today marks yet another milestone. A team of MIT researchers figured out a novel use for the technology by printing triaxial electrospray emitters—tiny nozzles that simultaneously dispense multiple liquids that solidify into three-layered droplets. These emitters are commonly used for manufacturing drugs, but their uses extend to self-healing materials and multiple other applications.

The smaller 3D-printed nozzle arrays are theoretically easier and cheaper to manufacture compared to existing techniques, and are reportedly far more efficient than conventional designs, dispensing more consistent and customizable droplets. This development could potentially boost the production rate of layered drugs, as well as other scenarios including self-healing materials, biosensors, contrast agents, solar cell coatings, and implant coatings.

The technology itself isn't new per se, but the absurdly intricate design and microscopic tolerances of these devices have historically demanded a semiconductor-class cleanroom for their manufacture. This new MIT development allows for using standard-ish 3D vat polymerization — shining UV light on resin, similar to what dentists use for filling cavities — to create an array of 16 triaxial nozzles in an area of about one square centimeter, all with their complex internal networks defined.

Broadly speaking, extant technologies of coaxial electro-spraying are either limited to two layers or can employ only a limited number of nozzles simultaneously, and the MIT's new array appears to be a significant step up, while being relatively easy to make and readily commercialized. If you're wondering what kind of printer you need to buy, it needs to be capable of layers 25 micrometers tall, or a width roughly a third of that of a human hair. The Asiga Max X27 printer the team used goes for around $13,000, an amount that is but a rounding error compared to the vast outlays that medical research usually commands.

Not only does 3D printing allows for making emitters in just a few hours, it lets the team improve the design of these devices beyond extant variants. Luis Fernando Velásquez-García, one of the researchers, goes so far as to say that "[the team] couldn’t make a device like this in a semiconductor cleanroom", further remarking that using a 3D printer allowed for rapid iteration of experimental designs. The new model also allows for highly precise adjustment to the nozzle's flow rates and voltages, in a bid to customize each microdroplet layer.

The ability to manufacture droplets with this kind of precision is applicable to a number of fields, the most obvious one being medical applications, where improved layered drugs can, for example, have a protective layer that dissolves in the stomach and a second one with the actual drug to activate in the intestine. Other than oral drugs, microparticles are useful for skin creams, gels, wound dressings, and injectable drugs, among others.

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