Advanced porous scaffold design using multi-void triply periodic minimal surface models with high surface area to volume ratios

Creating biophysically and biologically desirable porous scaffolds has always been one of the greatest challenges in tissue engineering (TE). Advanced additive manufacture (AM) methods such as three-dimensional (3D) printing techniques have established remarkable improvements in the fabrication of porous scaffolds and structures close in architecture to biological tissue. Such fabrication techniques have opened new areas of research in TE. Recently, it was shown that porous scaffolds which are mathematically designed by using triply periodic minimal surface (TPMS) pore geometry and fabricated through 3D printing techniques have remarkably high cell viability and mechanical strength when compared with conventional scaffolds. The enhanced cell adhesion, migration, and proliferation of TPMS-based scaffolds arise from the high surface area to volume ratio (SA/V ratio) that is a basic and fundamental concept of biology. Here, we report the design of multi-void TPMS-based scaffolds that dramatically increase the SA/V ratio of conventional TPMS scaffolds. Our findings suggest that the proposed novel design methodology can be applied to create a variety of computational models for prototyping and printing of biomimetic scaffolds and bioartificial tissues.