Development of 3D porous scaffolds of starch based polymers by conventional injection moulding

The technique used to manufacture scaffolds for tissue engineering is dependent on the properties of the polymer and its intended site of application. Ideally, the material must be designed with an appropriate degradation rate, and the processing technique must allow the preparation of 3-D scaffolds with controlled porosity and adequate pore sizes. This paper describes recent work that has been with the aim of producing porous polymeric structures from starch based blends with controlled morphology to be used as scaffolds for bone tissue engineering applications. The developed method is based on a melt-processing technique and consists of injection moulding a mixture of starch based polymer and a chemical blowing agent (CBA). In the work reported here, a two stage approach is used. As a first step, the relationships between processing conditions and morphology (porosity and pore size) of the samples are studied and, subsequently, the dependence of mechanical properties on this morphology is investigated