Fabrication of polylactic acid/halloysite nanotube scaffolds by foam injection molding for tissue engineering

Abstract This study presents the improvement of mechanical properties and cell viability of polylactic acid/halloysite nanotube (PLA/HNT) scaffolds that were fabricated by foam injection molding. In this regard, firstly PLA and HNT were compounded on a twin screw extruder by melt mixing method within the HNT loadings of 1, 3, 5 wt%. Then, neat PLA and PLA/HNT pellets were foam injected molded to obtain tensile test samples. The mechanical properties of the scaffolds were determined by tensile test and methyl‐thiazol‐tetrazolium technique was used for determination of cell viability. The results have shown that the scaffold with 3 wt% of HNT addition gave the highest mechanical strength among the fabricated scaffolds with 124.2% and 79.2% of increments in tensile strength and elongation, respectively. Also, 3 wt% of HNT demonstrated the highest cell viability among the obtained scaffolds due to its improved scaffold morphology.