3D Printing Research: Liquid Droplets

3D printers don’t build only solid objects anymore. They also build liquid objects, thanks to a research team at the University of Oxford.

Microscopic water-filled, lipid-coated droplets pop from a printer’s nozzles and stick to one another to form patterned structures. The researchers envision the clusters’ use in future tissue engineering. They also demonstrate the construction of a flowerlike droplet network that curls into a sphere because of osmosis. This self-folding behavior, the research team contends, might be put to use in drug delivery systems someday.

Watch the video below to learn more about this research.