With recent development of 3D printing technology, its applications to the bio-industry are increasing. Many research studies are being done for manufacturing personalized tablets through this technology in the pharmaceutical process. In this study, to control the dissolution rate of tablets, a lattice structure was inserted into the tablet and the dissolution rate was compared. The tablet proposed in this study can be manufactured by the FDM method, adopting a lattice structure with a large surface area-to-volume ratio. Tablets containing various lattice structures were fabricated using water-soluble PVA filaments and dissolution experiments were conducted in water at 37oC. As a result, it was confirmed that the specific surface area and the mass loss rate were proportional to both the 3D lattice structure and the monolith structure. Among different structures, the diamond structure had the most active dissolution.

Microlattice is well known as an efficient structure having a low density which maintains mechanical properties, so microlattice is being applied to the structural design of lightweight material in many industrial fields. In this study, we proposed a core-shell microlattice structure by the conformal coating of a metal nanoparticle-polymer composite in order to enhance the mechanical properties of polymeric microlattice printed by light-based 3D printing method. Polymeric architected microlattice was fabricated using digital light printing, which enabled the printing of complex structures with good surface smoothness. Then, the polymeric microlattice was conformally coated with aluminum nanoparticle-polymer composites. To investigate the effect of the metal nanoparticle-polymer composite coating on the mechanical properties of the microlattice, we studied the compressive behavior of cubic and octet-truss microlattices. As a result, we confirmed that both compressive strength and toughness of the two types of microlattices were effectively increased by coating with aluminum nanoparticle-polymer composites.