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Peer-reviewedCC BYPLOS One

Rapid thermoforming of polycarbonate cell culture accessories from 3D printed molds

  • Ganesh Malayath1
  • Fei Wang1
  • Chao Zhou1
  • Nathaniel Huebsch1,2
  1. 1Department of Biomedical Engineering, McKelvey School of Engineering, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, United States of America.
  2. 2Center for Cardiovascular Research, Washington University in St. Louis, St. Louis, Missouri, United States of America.
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Abstract

Standard cell-culture ware is mass-produced in fixed designs, whereas many tissue-engineering workflows require custom inserts, lids, chambers, or patterned substrates, especially during early-stage research and method development. Conventional fabrication methods for cell culture accessories involve injection molding and machining, which are too costly and time-consuming to implement for producing custom designs in small batches, and/or while testing the usefulness of a new design before mass production. Here, we propose polycarbonate (PC) thermoforming as a solution for creating customized transparent and autoclavable accessories. We demonstrate that optimized preheating of PC overcomes issues with bubbling during thermoforming. The use of high heat deflection temperature (HDT) resins allows these PC devices to be thermoformed off molds created by Digital Light Processing (DLP) 3D prints, enabling rapid prototyping of the PC. Using this approach, we fabricated custom PC well plate inserts, staining chambers and other custom accessories. We next validated the cytocompatibility of these devices by demonstrating culture and cardiomyocyte differentiation of human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC). Finally, we demonstrated the utility of thermoformed PC for creating 3D engineered tissues (cardiospheres). These results establish DLP-assisted PC thermoforming as a rapid, low-cost workflow for fabricating transparent, autoclavable, user-defined cell-culture accessories during prototyping and small-batch bioengineering applications.

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Cite

BibTeXRIS
BibTeX
@article{malayath2026rapid,
  title = {{Rapid thermoforming of polycarbonate cell culture accessories from 3D printed molds}},
  author = {Ganesh Malayath and Fei Wang and Chao Zhou and Nathaniel Huebsch},
  journal = {PLOS One},
  year = {2026},
  month = oct,
  doi = {10.1371/journal.pone.0361065},
  url = {https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0361065},
  note = {CC BY},
}
RIS
TY  - JOUR
TI  - Rapid thermoforming of polycarbonate cell culture accessories from 3D printed molds
AU  - Ganesh Malayath
AU  - Fei Wang
AU  - Chao Zhou
AU  - Nathaniel Huebsch
PY  - 2026
DA  - 2026/10/26
JO  - PLOS One
DO  - 10.1371/journal.pone.0361065
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0361065
AB  - Standard cell-culture ware is mass-produced in fixed designs, whereas many tissue-engineering workflows require custom inserts, lids, chambers, or patterned substrates, especially during early-stage research and method development. Conventional fabrication methods for cell culture accessories involve injection molding and machining, which are too costly and time-consuming to implement for producing custom designs in small batches, and/or while testing the usefulness of a new design before mass production. Here, we propose polycarbonate (PC) thermoforming as a solution for creating customized transparent and autoclavable accessories. We demonstrate that optimized preheating of PC overcomes issues with bubbling during thermoforming. The use of high heat deflection temperature (HDT) resins allows these PC devices to be thermoformed off molds created by Digital Light Processing (DLP) 3D prints, enabling rapid prototyping of the PC. Using this approach, we fabricated custom PC well plate inserts, staining chambers and other custom accessories. We next validated the cytocompatibility of these devices by demonstrating culture and cardiomyocyte differentiation of human induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSC). Finally, we demonstrated the utility of thermoformed PC for creating 3D engineered tissues (cardiospheres). These results establish DLP-assisted PC thermoforming as a rapid, low-cost workflow for fabricating transparent, autoclavable, user-defined cell-culture accessories during prototyping and small-batch bioengineering applications.
SN  - 1932-6203
ER  -