MIT Boffins Take Electrospray Nozzles Out of the Cleanroom, Into the 3D Printer
9th June 2026
The process for producing triple-layer drug-delivery particles and materials for tissue regeneration could get easier, thanks to a new advance in creating the electrospray nozzles used to make them. A team of MIT researchers has now used a 3D resin printer to output tiny electrospray nozzles without the expensive cleanrooms they normally require.
A team led by MIT principal research scientist Dr. Luis Fernando Velásquez-García detailed its work developing tiny arrays of triaxial electrospray emitters in a recent paper. Before jumping into what they actually did, it might be worth explaining exactly what we’re talking about and why it’s such a potential breakthrough.
Electrospraying is a process that relies on tiny nozzles – we’re talking fractions of a millimeter, here – that are subjected to an electric field to atomize liquids into droplets smaller than what can be achieved through purely physical methods. Electrospraying can be done with lots of different liquid materials, and has a variety of uses, from ionizing liquids for mass spectrometry, to space propulsion.
Such cutting-edge applications traditionally require expensive equipment, and electrospray nozzles have classically been no different.