Ultrasound hardens sono-ink to create biocompatible 3D shapes

Developed by engineers at Duke University and Harvard Medical School, the ink can be used in deep tissues for biomedical purposes ranging from bone healing to heart valve repair. The team’s findings are detailed in Science.

Dubbed deep-penetrating acoustic volumetric printing (DVAP), the process has been developed by Y. Shrike Zhang, associate bioengineer at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and associate professor at Harvard Medical School, and Junjie Yao, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Duke.

This new technique involves a specialised ink that reacts to soundwaves rather than light, enabling them to create biomedically useful structures at unprecedented tissue depths.

“DVAP relies on the sonothermal effect, which occurs when soundwaves are absorbed and increase the temperature to harden our ink,” Yao said in a statement. “Ultrasound waves can penetrate more than 100 times deeper than light while still spatially confined, so we can reach tissues, bones and organs with high spatial precision that haven’t been reachable with light-based printing methods.”