US team 3D prints nanofibre 3D printing device

The technique, which is reported in the journal Nanotechnology is claimed to be both cheaper and more reliable than existing processes for producing the materials, which have promising applications in areas ranging from tissue engineering, to body armour and solar cells.

The new device consists of an array of small nozzles through which a fluid containing particles of a polymer are pumped. The group claims that the technique matches the production rate and power efficiency of its best-performing predecessor - also developed at MIT - but significantly reduces variation in the fibres’ diameters and doesn’t require a clean-room environment to operate.

“In the next few years, nobody is going to be doing microfluidics n the clean room,” claimed Luis Fernando Velásquez-García, a principal research scientist in MIT’s Microsystems Technology Laboratories and senior author on the new paper. “3D printing is a technology that can do it so much better — with better choice of materials, with the possibility to really make the structure that you would like to make.”