Session: Advances in Separations:

3D printing has physically enabled the fabrication of perfectly ordered and complex structures. This could revolutionise manufacturing of traditional chromatography stationary phases, moving away from randomly arranged spheres with sub-optimal performances and irregular flow patterns. However, the employment of 3D printing in bioseparations has been hindered by the lack of 3D printable materials with chromatographic functionality, and poor printing resolution leading to features of only about 500 µm.
In this work, we present a novel material that can be 3D printed at high resolution using Digital Light Processing. The key component of the material is glycidyl methacrylate, a bifunctional monomer bearing a photopolimerisable methacrylate group on one hand and an epoxide functional group on the other. The epoxide group is notoriously reactive and it can be easily functionalised with tailored ligands to pursue different types of chromatography.
The newly formulated material was 3D printed with feature size of up to 200 µm using complex geometries such as the Schoen gyroid. Following the fabrication, the material was functionalised for ion exchange chromatography using simple immobilisation chemistry protocols. The materials were studied with FT-IR and SEM, and their flow and bind and elute properties were evaluated and compared against traditional chromatography materials.
This work shows the development of a platform material that can be successfully 3D printed with resolutions up to 200 µm and further customised to interact with different target molecules. This study further supports the potential capability of 3D printed chromatography media for bioseparations.

Mariachiara Conti

The University of Edinburgh

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