Biofabrication via integrated additive manufacturing and electrofluidodynamics

Stemming from the first pioneering works carried out in the late 1990s, a fast-growing body of scientific literature has been focused on the investigation of various additive manufacturing techniques (e.g., fused deposition modeling and stereolithography) for the development of customized polymeric devices for different biomedical applications, such as tissue engineering scaffolds and permanent endoprostheses. In addition, the combination of additive manufacturing with other polymer processing techniques has been investigated as a powerful tool for the enhancement of polymeric scaffold structural and functional features including resolution, surface topography, local porosity, and multiscale architectural design. This chapter is aimed at providing a comprehensive overview of the current progress integrating additive manufacturing and electrofluidodynamic techniques. The main technological aspects of additive manufacturing as a biofabrication approach to developing tissue-engineered constructs are first outlined by presenting and discussing different strategies involving the processing of cell-laden materials or the fabrication of scaffolds able to steer cell behavior through structural stimuli. The different technological solutions developed to integrate additive manufacturing and electrofluidodynamics are then analyzed through an overview of significant literature aimed at imparting nanoscale features to microarchitectures or patterning nanostructures (i.e., nanofibers or nanoparticles) into 3D-layered architectures.