• Jones, Julian
• Ren, Jiongyu
• Stevens, Molly
• Ainsworth, Madison
• Solanki, Anu

Abstract

<p>Additive manufacturing via melt electrowriting (MEW) can create ordered microfiber scaffolds relevant for bone tissue engineering; however, there remain limitations in the adoption of new printing materials, especially in MEW of biomaterials. For example, while promising composite formulations of polycaprolactone with strontium-substituted bioactive glass have been processed into large or disordered fibres, from what is known, biologically-relevant concentrations (&gt;10 wt%) have never been printed into ordered microfibers using MEW. In this study, rheological characterization is used in combination with a predictive mathematical model to optimize biomaterial formulations and MEW conditions required to extrude various PCL and PCL/SrBG biomaterials to create ordered scaffolds. Previously, MEW printing of PCL/SrBG composites with 33 wt% glass required unachievable extrusion pressures. The composite formulation is modified using an evaporable solvent to reduce viscosity 100-fold to fall within the predicted MEW pressure, temperature, and voltage tolerances, which enabled printing. This study reports the first fabrication of reproducible, ordered high-content bioactive glass microfiber scaffolds by applying predictive modeling.</p>

Topics

• impedance spectroscopy
• melt
• extrusion
• glass
• glass
• Strontium
• composite
• viscosity
• biomaterials
• additive manufacturing