Additive Manufacturing of Bio-Inspired Microstructures for Bone Tissue Engineering

Abstract

Bone Tissue Engineering (BTE) focuses on restoring tissues that have lost their function due to disease or trauma. Porous artificial scaffolds are used in order to restore the structural functions of bone tissues. In recent years, Additive Manufacturing (AM) technologies that can be integrated into Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software have shown great potential in this field. The use of AM technologies in the production of bone scaffolds made it possible to construct structures with appropriate mechanical properties and different configurations. In this study, artificial bone scaffolds designed using bio-inspired geometries and Computer-Aided System for Tissue Scaffolds (CASTS) library were printed by Fused Deposition Modeling (FDM) method using Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) and Polylactic Acid (PLA) materials. The aim of this study is to investigate the effects of bone scaffolds created with bio-inspired microstructures on dimensional accuracy, weight, mechanical performance, structural strength, porosity and pore size. According to the test results, PLA printed scaffolds have better results than ABS printed scaffolds in terms of dimensional accuracy, porosity, pore diameter and weight. Among the PLA-printed scaffolds, the high pore diameter of the scutoid geometry resulted in low mechanical strength. In terms of porosity, the icosahedron geometry gave better results than the cubic structure. Therefore, PLA-printed icosahedron geometry can be considered as the most suitable scaffold type for bone tissue regeneration.