PHASE SEPARATION AND PARTICULATE LEACHING INTEGRATED 3D PRINTING OF POROUS SCAFFOLDS FOR BONE TISSUE ENGINEERING APPLICATIONS

Conventional 3D printing by itself is incapable of creating pores on a micro scale within deposited filaments throughout 3D scaffolds. These pores and hence larger surface areas are needed for cells to be adhered, proliferated, and differentiated. The aim of this work was to fabricate 3D polycaprolactone (PCL) scaffolds with internal multiscale porosity by using two different 3D printing techniques (ink/pellet of polymer-salt composite in low/high temperature printing) combined with salt leaching to improve cell adhesion, and cell proliferation besides to change degradation rate of PCL scaffolds: 1. Non-solvent phase separation integrated 3D printing of polymer-salt inks with various salt content (i.e., low temperature ink-based printing, LT). 2. FDM printing of composite polymer-salt pellets which will be obtained by casting and evaporating of prepared ink (i.e., high temperature composite-pellet-based printing, HT). Further, the two approaches were followed by post salt leaching. Stem cells were able to attach on the surface and grow up to 14 days based on increasing cellular activities.