[2024] 3D Printed Bioelectronics for Regenerative Medicine

Background: The future of 3D printing in healthcare is incredibly promising, with ongoing research into bioprinting tissues and organs. This could potentially lead to on-demand production of living body tissues, blood vessels, and even whole organs. Recently, it has become practicable to 3D print organic electronic materials^[1] to construct bioelectronic devices to monitor and stimulate biological activity. This creates exciting new opportunities for bioelectronic research, particularly for stem cell engineering.

Aim: This project targets to the development of highly biomimetic, and electrically active 3D printed bioelectronic devices to be used for regenerative medicine. Functional inks will be developed by combining the organic electronic materials, i.e. PEDOT:PSS,^[2] with biomaterials that are found in our body, i.e. collagen. These functional inks will be 3D printed with a commercially available 3D printer in electrode and transistor configurations^[3] and be used to develop functional tissue with stem cells.  

The student will have access to the Bioelectronics section and cleanroom (EKL) facilities at TU Delft to carry out the work.

Literature

[1] A. Dominguez-Alfaro et al., Light-Based 3D Multi-Material Printing of Micro-Structured Bio-Shaped, Conducting and Dry Adhesive Electrodes for Bioelectronics, Advanced Science 2306424, 2023.

[2] Jinhao Li et al., 3D-printed PEDOT:PSS for soft robotics, Nature Reviews Materials 8, 604, 2023.

[3] J. Rivnay et al., Organic electrochemical transistors, Nature Reviews Materials 3, 17086, 2018.

Assignment

1^st part:  Literature review of 3D printed bioelectronics.

2^nd part: Optimization of 3D printing inks and processing parameters

3^rd part: 3D printed electrodes and transistors for stem cell engineering.

Requirements

MSc students from Microelectronics, Biomedical Engineering, Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science and Electrical Engineering are welcomed to apply. Interested students should contact Dr. Achilleas Savva (a.savva@tudelft.nl), by including their CV, the list of courses attended, and a motivation letter.

Contact

Last modified: 2024-03-06