3D Live Ink Improved for Skin Renewal

Tomorrow's dermal prostheses that can be created by printing in three dimensions with a new ink pattern leaked by living bacteria.
Bacteria can do everything from breaking down toxins to vitamin synthesis. As they move, they form strands of cellulosic material useful for wounding and other medical applications. Bacterial cellulose can only be formed on a flat surface. In fact, a few of our bodies have a flat surface in the perfect plane. In a publication published in the Science Advances Journal, a special ink was prepared for these living bacteria. Because only things made with ink can be made not only on plain paper, but also in a three-dimensional print or rounded form on any of a T-shirt.

Cellulosic, which is made up of bacteria that do not have a sedative effect when applied as waste, is applied to the vast amount of water they move. Because your body is a natural material, it is unlikely that your body will reject it. For all these reasons, many potential applications have been established in biosensors or in protected documents before organelle protection and skin grafting have been sent.

It is important here how the cellulosic is produced. This harmless bacterium forms cellulose rings that allow its progression. For this reason, it is necessary to go into action to create the material, but this motion makes it difficult to suppress 3D. In order to print the ink discharge stream in a certain way and to monitor the ink in the print sprayer, you have to make the bacilli thick enough to freeze the bacillus to print something in 3D.

For this reason, the team needed a material to keep the bacteria alive and mobile while having the necessary properties for printing. The team's special "living ink" contains sugar that the bacteria use as food. Thus, they can continue to produce cellulose by keeping them alive. In addition, a type of part is separated to provide the flow chamber pressure prior to all the inking of the glass beads in the system. Thus most of the cellulosics are produced on the surface of the fully printed object. When the ink is pushed, the bacteria may continue to produce more oxygen and more food.

Patrick Rühs, one of the authors of the research on complex materials in ETH Zurich, says the team can be printed on paper in other forms. These surfaces include a thin film, a T-shirt, and a cellulose film placed on a silicone-coated template.