Fabrication and characterisation of 3D printed MWCNT composite porous scaffolds for bone regeneration

3D Printing of Polycaprolactone–Polyaniline Electroactive Scaffolds for Bone Tissue Engineering

“…The PANI powder (after ball milling) was mixed with the melted PCL (~80 • C) by manual physical melt blending for a minimum of 30 min, based on a previously described method [12][13][14], to ensure a homogenous PCL/PANI blend with PANI filler loading concentrations of 0.1; 1; 2% wt. The PCL/PANI blends were allowed to cool and then cut into small pieces to enable loading into the material chamber of the 3D printer.…”

“…The scaffold was designed with a fibre spacing of 660 µm, a slice thickness of 280 µm, a 0 • /90 • lay-down pattern, and dimensions of 30 mm × 30 × mm × 3.36 mm. The printing parameters used are deposition velocity of 20 mm s −1 , a material chamber temperature of 90 • C, an extrusion pressure of 6 bar, and a screw rotation velocity of 15 rpm [12][13][14]. Scaffolds were cut to 11 mm × 11 mm × 3.36 mm for all in vitro studies.…”

“…This new class of smart electroactive biomaterials that are able to deliver electrical, electrochemical or electromechanical stimulation directly to cells, tissue, and organs could bring a significant breakthrough in the tissue engineering field [3,5,6]. Electroactive scaffolds have already been investigated for use in neural [4,5,9], muscle [10,11], bone [12][13][14], and cardiac [15,16] tissue engineering applications. A key requirement is the development of biocompatible, biodegradable, and electrically conductive biomaterials.…”

“…Electroactive scaffolds can be fabricated from conductive materials or prepared by the addition of conductive fillers to create a composite. These conductive materials can be classified as: carbon-based [5,12,14,15], conductive polymers [1][2][3]6], and metallic-based [16][17][18][19][20][21].…”

“…However, these methods offer limited control of scaffold morphological properties such as pore size, interconnectedness, and fibre diameter. By contrast, 3D printing enables the precise control of scaffold morphology with the production of interconnected structures and a regular pore size [12][13][14]. 3D printing has been utilised in a range of tissue engineering applications such as cartilage [47], bone [48], vasculature [49], and nerve [50] and facilitates the fabrication of multimaterial and geometrical complex architectures that more accurately reflects that native in vivo environment [51].…”