Exploring the Morphology of High-Resolution 3D Printed Scaffolds for Tissue Engineering

Three-dimensional (3D) printing or additive manufacturing (AM) is a technique that is commonly used within tissue engineering and regenerative medicine (TERM). Among AM techniques, melt electrowriting (MEW) is known for its high-resolution capabilities, which utilizes thermoplastic materials to produce scaffolds with microscale structures for tissue engineering (TE). Although more popular in recent years, MEW is still underdeveloped, causing the majority of MEW scaffolds utilized within TE to have a 0°/90° laydown pattern. This study explores different laydown pattern (0°/90°, 0°/60°/120°, and 0°/36°/72°/108°/144°) scaffolds made of poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) and how these scaffolds are morphologically different and affect cell seeding. The results show that cell seeding was similar between all of the different laydown patterns, with a more even distribution found in the 0°/36°/72°/108°/144°) scaffold due to the better 3D interconnectivity found in this design