Fundamental characteristics of printed cell structures utilizing micro-drop injection

Micro-drop injection took place when high voltage was applied between a capillary tube filled with ion conductive liquid and a metal plate electrode. Micro-drop injection has two merits; those are high resolution to print and ability to eject highly viscous liquid. Recently many researchers applied commercial inkjet for bio-printing. Main problem of this application is difficulty to print relatively highly viscous liquid. I think the merits of micro-drop injection will clear this problem. So, I applied the micro-drop injection for printing living cells and highly viscous scaffolds to make 3D cell structures. Cells were not killed in spite that high voltage was applied by micro-drop injection. Because current did not flow inside cell but around cell. In this paper, we cleared the fundamental characteristics of patterning living cells and gelatin and fabricated 3D cell cylinder utilizing micro-drop injection.