Additive Manufacturing for Bioseparation

Dear Colleagues,

Emerging methods for additive manufacturing (3D printing) are an important driver for novel technological solutions for bioseparation, solving decade old problems that cannot be tackled by any conventional manufacturing techniques. Chromatography-based bioseparation requires homogenous column packing, but conventional technologies, like bead-based columns, fiber-based membranes, and phase-separated monolithic structures, rely on a stochastic process and cannot be fully homogenous in their design down to a µm level. Additive manufacturing offers complete freedom of geometry and potentially freedom of functionality for the generated structures. Those novel geometries, alongside novel methods for the functionalization and manufacturing of chromatographic devices, will expand the knowledge and capabilities of chromatography for biomolecules drastically, through the direct link of a digitally available structure for computational fluid dynamics and the physical object through 3D printing. Especially for the case of biomacromolecules and bionanoparticles, such as viruses and virus like particles, there is an immediate need for novel chromatographic formats. In addition, the generation of chromatographic support from the currently available cheap 3D printers could lead to a democratization of research and the availability of in-house manufactured high performance chromatographic materials, as well as for low income research environments, and will enable the customization of chromatographic support materials by the end-user.

Dr. Peter Satzer
Guest Editor

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• additive manufacturing
• geometry
• 3D-printing
• chromatography
• bioseparation