Three-dimensional printing (3DP) has been widely adopted in various field thanks to its capability to easily and quickly fabricate complex 3D structures. In recent years, especially in the field of biomedical, it has been widely used in the fabrication of bone scaffolds. The scaffold is inserted into the fractured or injured sites to promote bone cell migration and in-growth. For this reason, 3DP is useful for personalized bone scaffolds production. The scaffolds have been fabricated in various 3DP methods, such as hot-melt, pneumatic, and piston extrusion. However, the fused deposition modeling (FDM) method using feed filaments has hardly been reported, even though it provides several advantages such as versatility, convenience, and accessibility.<br/>In this study, we fabricated filaments for FDM 3DP, which is composed of polycaprolactone (PCL)/hydroxyapatite (HA), a raw material mainly used for bone scaffold. Using the fabricated filaments with the wt.% of HA from 5 to 25, specimens for evaluating mechanical and electrical properties were printed by commercial 3D printer. Specially, mechanical tensile test of the filaments and specimens were performed. In addition, electrical dielectric properties of PCL/HA composites, which was not reported in other studies, was also investigated for the potential application as a bone mimetic testbed for implantable wireless devices. Our method can be usefully used in various fields by providing an facile fabrication of a biocompatible structure.

Fabrication of biocompatible polycaprolactone-hydroxyapatite filament for bone scaffolds and artificial bone testbeds via FDM 3D printing

ACS Spring 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.