Printed hydrogel materials

An inkjet printer has been developed for printing hydrogel materials. The printer uses two peizo industrial printheads to print out combinations of cationic and anionic polymers, which then form gels on a substrate in a clear demonstration of reactive printing. The synthetic polymers poly-diallyl-dimethyl ammonium chloride and polystyrene sulfonate, and the naturally occurring polymers, alginate, chitosan and gellan gum all formed gels via inkjet deposition.