Conductive, multilayer scaffold with micro-porous structure for tissue engineering

Abstract

Polymeric materials have been used extensively for the fabrication of various biomedical devices. In this paper, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) was adopted as the biomaterial to construct a porous, conductive nanocomposite scaffold for tissue regeneration. This proposed conductive scaffold will incorporate dielectrophoresis to manipulate cells towards the scaffold body for efficient cell seeding. In order to enhance the cell attachment onto the scaffold, microscale pores were also integrated throughout the scaffold surface in addition to the existing porous architecture from the scaffold geometry. Experiments were conducted to characterize the material properties of the proposed scaffold material and examine the improvement on the cell seeding process.