Too big, too small, too O₂: the Pandoro Effect from oxygen gradients in tomographic volumetric additive manufacturing.

Abstract

Tomographic Volumetric Additive Manufacturing (TVAM) enables rapid, layerless biofabrication; however, its application to thermoreversible hydrogels is often compromised by complex chemical kinetics. In this study, we identify and characterize a recurrent printing artifact -termed the<i>Pandoro effect</i>-manifesting as a truncated-cone distortion caused by premature polymerization at the vial bottom and inhibition at the top. We demonstrate that this phenomenon originates from a vertical oxygen gradient driven by the thermal hysteresis of resin preparation: heating depletes dissolved oxygen, while subsequent cooling induces diffusion-limited re-oxygenation from the air-resin interface. To mitigate this, we present a multi-tiered strategy. First, we introduce a coupled ray optical and photochemical optimization model that rigorously accounts for spatially heterogeneous inhibitor concentrations. Unlike conventional threshold-based approaches, this differentiable framework explicitly simulates the spatiotemporal reaction-diffusion dynamics of oxygen depletion, allowing the inverse solver to predictively compensate for local inhibition gradients. Complementing this algorithmic correction, we validate two process-based interventions: the elimination of the air-resin interface and the control of headspace atmosphere. We demonstrate that these strategies effectively suppress the<i>Pandoro effect</i>, and are compatible with cell-laden resins. This work establishes guidelines for reproducible volumetric bioprinting and expands our open-source Dr.TVAM platform with advanced polymerization modeling capabilities.