Coextrusion-Based 3D Plotting of Ceramic Pastes for Porous Calcium Phosphate Scaffolds Comprised of Hollow Filaments.

This paper demonstrates the utility of coextrusion-based 3D plotting of ceramic pastes (CoEx-3DP) as a new type of additive manufacturing (AM) technique, which can produce porous calcium phosphate (CaP) ceramic scaffolds comprised of hollow CaP filaments. In this technique, green filaments with a controlled core/shell structure can be produced by coextruding an initial feedrod, comprised of the carbon black (CB) core and CaP shell, through a fine nozzle in an acetone bath and then deposited in a controlled manner according to predetermined paths. In addition, channels in CaP filaments can be created through the removal of the CB cores during heat-treatment.

Novel Self-Assembly-Induced Gelation for Nanofibrous Collagen/Hydroxyapatite Composite Microspheres.

This study demonstrates the utility of the newly developed self-assembly-induced gelation technique for the synthesis of porous collagen/hydroxyapatite (HA) composite microspheres with a nanofibrous structure. This new approach can produce microspheres of a uniform size using the droplets that form at the nozzle tip before gelation. These microspheres can have a highly nanofibrous structure due to the immersion of the droplets in a coagulation bath (water/acetone), in which the collagen aggregates in the solution can self-assemble into fibrils due to pH-dependent precipitation.

Synthesis of nanofibrous gelatin/silica bioglass composite microspheres using emulsion coupled with thermally induced phase separation.

This study proposes an innovative way of synthesizing porous gelatin/silica bioglass composite microspheres with a nanofibrous structure using emulsion coupled with thermally induced phase separation (TIPS). In particular, a mixture of the solvent (water) and non-solvent (ethanol) was used to induce a unique phase separation of gelatin/silica mixtures (i.e.

Sol-gel derived nanoscale bioactive glass (NBG) particles reinforced poly(ε-caprolactone) composites for bone tissue engineering.

This study investigated the effect of the addition of sol-gel derived nanoscale bioactive glass (NBG) particles on the mechanical properties and biological performances of PCL polymer, in order to evaluate the potential applications of PCL/NBG composites for bone tissue regeneration. Regardless of the NBG contents (10, 20, and 30 wt.%), the NBG particles, which were synthesized through the sol-gel process using polyethylene glycol (PEG) polymer as a template, could be uniformly dispersed in the PCL matrix, while generating pores in the PCL/NBG composites.