Validated modeling of bubble growth, impingement and retraction to predict cell-opening in thermoplastic foaming

Engineering bioactive synthetic polymers for biomedical applications: a review with emphasis on tissue engineering and controlled release

“…133 Despite the disordered nature of the method, an accurate control of the pore size distribution, porosity, open-cell features, and tortuosity, as well as the surface roughness, can be achieved by carefully controlling the processing parameters. 134,135 The lack of any requirement for cytotoxic solvents, the possibility of operating at mild conditions (for example, with PCL, at temperatures below 37 1C), and the potential to process a wide variety of polymers for biomedical use are the main advantages of the technique. 136 The use of CO 2 or N 2 as a blowing agent represents another important advantage of supercritical foaming in tissue engineering applications, since these gases rapidly leave the porous matrix during foaming and have negligible residual cytotoxicity.…”

Morphological Analysis of Foamed HDPE/LLDPE Blends by X-ray Micro-Tomography: Effect of Blending, Mixing Intensity and Foaming Temperature

“…The expansion goes on until the opposing stretching elastic forces in the polymer matrix outside the cell balances the gas pressure inside the cell. During this time, cell growth continues slowly while stress relaxation is taking place in the matrix at the cell boundary [69,70]. If the elastic forces cannot overcome the pressure inside the cell, the cell will continue to grow until it reaches another neighboring cell, breaking the separating walls to make bigger cells (cell coalescence) [71].…”

Validation of Milner's visco-elastic theory of sintering for the generation of porous polymers with finely tuned morphology

“…24 In particular, microfluidic techniques allow generation of porous materials with highly monodisperse and even periodic pores. 25,26 However, since the pore opening mechanisms are badly understood, 27,28 it remains a major challenge to control the stability of the initially liquid template and to tune explicitly the presence and size of the interconnections. Moreover, the necessity to stabilise the initially liquid template of two immiscible fluids puts important constraints on possible formulations.…”