Spatiotemporal Magnetocaloric Microenvironment for Guiding the Fate of Biodegradable Polymer Implants

Abstract The degradation behavior of implants is significantly important for bone repair. However, it is still unprocurable to spatiotemporally regulate the degradation of the implants to match bone ingrowth. In this paper, a magneto‐controlled biodegradation model is established to explore the degradation behavior of magnetic scaffolds in a magnetothermal microenvironment generated by an alternating magnetic field (AMF). The results demonstrate that the scaffolds can be heated by magnetic nanoparticles (NPs) under AMF, which dramatically accelerated scaffold degradation. Especially, magnetic NPs modified by oleic acid with a better interface compatibility exhibit a greater heating efficiency to further facilitate the degradation. Furthermore, the molecular dynamics simulations reveal that the enhanced motion correlation between magnetic NPs and polymer matrix can accelerate the energy transfer. As a proof‐of‐concept, the feasibility of magneto‐controlled degradation for implants is demonstrated, and an optimizing strategy for better heating efficiency of nanomaterials is provided, which may have great instructive significance for clinical medicine.