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Updated: Jan 31, 2026

Planar and Three-Dimensional Printing of Conductive Inks
Published on: December 9, 2011
3-D printing of chitosan-calcium phosphate inks: rheology, interactions and characterization
Silvia Stella Ramirez Caballero1,2, Eduardo Saiz3, Alexandra Montembault4
1Univ Lyon, INSA Lyon, MATEIS UMR CNRS 5510, Bât. Blaise Pascal, 7 Avenue Jean Capelle, Villeurbanne, France.
Abstract:
Bone substitute fabrication is of interest to meet the worldwide incidence of bone disorders. Physical chitosan hydrogels with intertwined apatite particles were chosen to meet the bio-physical and mechanical properties required by a potential bone substitute. A set up for 3-D printing by robocasting was found adequate to fabricate scaffolds. Inks consisted of suspensions of calcium phosphate particles in chitosan acidic aqueous solution. The inks are shear-thinning and consist of a suspension of dispersed platelet aggregates of dicalcium phosphate dihydrate in a continuous chitosan phase. The rheological properties of the inks were studied, including their shear-thinning characteristics and yield stress. Scaffolds were printed in basic water/ethanol baths to induce transformation of chitosan-calcium phosphates suspension into physical hydrogel of chitosan mineralized with apatite. Scaffolds consisted of a chitosan polymeric matrix intertwined with poorly crystalline apatite particles. Results indicate that ink rheological properties could be tuned by controlling ink composition: in particular, more printable inks are obtained with higher chitosan concentration (0.19 mol·L-1).
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