Numerical analysis of the cell droplet loading process in cell printing

Abstract

Cell printing is a promising technology in tissue engineering, with which the complex three-dimensional tissue constructs can be formed by sequentially printing the cells layer by layer. Though some cell printing experiments with commercial inkjet printers show the possibility of this idea, there are some problems, such as cell damage due the mechanical impact during cell direct writing, which include two processes of cell ejection and cell landing. Cell damage observed during the bioprinting process is often simply attributed to interactions between cells and substrate. However, in reality, cell damage can also arise from complex mechanical effects caused by collisions between cell droplets during continuous printing processes. The objective of this research is to numerically simulate the collision effects between continuously printed cell droplets within the bioprinting process, with a particular focus on analyzing the consequent cell droplet deformation and stress distribution. The influence of gravity force was ignored, cell droplet landing was divided into four phases, the first phase is cell droplet free falling at a certain velocity; the second phase is the collision between the descending cell droplet and the pre-existing cell droplets that have been previously printed onto the substrate. This collision results in significant deformation of the cell membranes of both cell droplets in contact; the third phase is the cell droplet hitting a rigid body substrate; the fourth phase is the cell droplet being bounced. We conducted a qualitative analysis of the stress and strain of cell droplets during the cell printing process to evaluate the influence of different parameters on the printing effect. The results indicate that an increase in jet velocity leads to an increase in stress on cell droplets, thereby increasing the probability of cell damage. Adding cell droplet layers on the substrate can effectively reduce the impact force caused by collisions. Smaller droplets are more susceptible to rupture at higher velocities. These findings provide a scientific basis for optimizing cell printing parameters.