A facile approach to construct ferroferric oxide/chitosan composite scaffolds with three-dimensional oriented structure has been explored in this research. Chitosan and ferroferric oxide are co-precipitated by using an in situ precipitation method, and then lyophilized to get the composite scaffolds. XRD indicated that Fe 3 O 4 was generated during the gel formation process, and increasing the content of magnetic particles could destruct the crystal structure of chitosan. When the content of magnetic particles is lower than 10%, the layer-by-layer structure and wheel spoke structure are coexisting in the scaffolds. Increasing the content of magnetic particles, just layer-by-layer structure could be observed in the scaffolds. Ferroferric oxide particles were uniformly distributed in the matrix, the size of which was about 0.48 μm in diameter, 2 μm in length. Porosity of magnetic chitosan composite scaffolds is about 90%. When the ratio of ferroferric oxide to chitosan is 5/100, the compressive strength of the material is 0.4367 MPa, which is much higher than that of pure chitosan scaffolds, indicating that the layer-by-layer and wheel spokes complex structure is beneficial for the improvement of the mechanical properties of chitosan scaffolds. However, increasing the content of ferroferric oxide, the compressive strength of scaffolds decreased, because of the decreasing of chitosan crystallization and aggregation of magnetic particles as stress centralized body. Another reason is that the layer-by-layer and wheel spokes complex structure makes bigger contributions for the compressive strength than the layer-by-layer structure does. Three-dimensional ferroferric oxide/chitosan scaffolds could be used as hyperthermia generator system, improving the local circulation of blood, promoting the aggradation of calcium salt and stimulating bone tissue regeneration.
Chitosan (CS) rods were reinforced at high temperatures to form network structure by self-crosslinking of amino groups. Properties of treated CS rods were studied by FTIR spectroscopy, intrinsic viscosity measurement, mechanical properties testing and water absorption measurement. The FTIR spectra indicated that the CS configuration was transformed from b-CS for untreated CS rods to a-CS for thermally treated CS rods. Meanwhile, the crosslinking also occurred between amino groups of CS. Due to the increase in the crosslinking degree, the intrinsic viscosity increased with the rising of temperature. It was found that the network structure enhanced the bending strength of CS rods, which reached 154.8 MPa when CS rods were treated at 140uC for 2 h. Thermal treatment also reduced the water absorption of CS rods. Due to the improved mechanical properties, thermally treated CS rods could be used as a novel device for internal fixation of bone fracture.
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