8 - MEMS manufacturing techniques for tissue scaffolding devices

Abstract

Cell, scaffold, and growth information are considered as the basic elements of tissue engineering. Scaffolds are expected to support cell colonization, migration, growth, and differentiation and to guide the development of the required tissue. This chapter discusses the state-of-the-art in scaffold design and fabrication issues based on microelectromechanical system (MEMS)-manufacturing techniques. It begins with a discussion of the tissue scaffold design considerations including surface characteristics and mechanical properties. The subsequent section then goes into details the main point of this chapter – tissue scaffold fabrication using MEMS approaches. Available applications of the MEMS-fabricated tissue scaffolds including cardiovascular, nervous, bone, and stem cell differentiation are illustrated in the succeeding section. A brief conclusion that covers the future work is given in the last section.