Portable inhalers are used for delivering drugs to the lung in the form of aerosols and form the standard treatment for diseases such as Asthma, COPD, and cystic fibrosis. However, for aqueous drug formulations, spray nozzle chips have so far been restricted to cleanroom manufacture due to their small feature sizes. Here we present a spring-actuated 3D-printed swirl nozzle that sprays an aqueous drug solution, matching propellant-containing inhalers in aerosolization time. The use of two-photon polymerization enables the small nozzle feature size of 100 $\mu \text{m}$ and device print times of only 4 min, making serial mass-fabrication a viable option. Our 35 bar spring-operated swirl nozzle prototype achieves mean volumetric particle sizes of 12.5 ${\mu }\text{m}$ on doses of 100 ${\mu }\text{l}$ , aerosolized in 270 ms, as fast as a propellant-driven inhaler. [2021-0002]

中文翻译：

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3D打印可制造旋流喷嘴，以快速雾化水基药物

便携式吸入器用于以气雾剂形式将药物输送到肺部，并成为哮喘，COPD和囊性纤维化等疾病的标准治疗方法。然而，对于水性药物制剂，由于其小特征尺寸，到目前为止，喷嘴芯片已被限制在无尘室制造中。在这里，我们介绍了一种弹簧驱动的3D打印旋流喷嘴，该喷嘴可喷洒药物水溶液，在雾化时间内与含推进剂的吸入器相匹配。双光子聚合的使用可实现100的小喷嘴特征尺寸 $ \ mu \ text {m} $ 而且设备的打印时间仅为4分钟，因此批量批量制造是一个可行的选择。我们的35 bar弹簧操作旋流喷嘴原型实现了12.5的平均体积粒径 $ {\ mu} \ text {m} $ 剂量为100 $ {\ mu} \ text {l} $ ，在270毫秒内雾化，速度与推进剂驱动的吸入器一样快。[2021-0002]