Fabrication of bimodal porous scaffold with enhanced mechanical properties using silanized sisal fibers for potential application in bone tissue engineering

Abstract

In recent years, the applications of natural biodegradable fibers have been commonly explored to enhance the mechanical and biological characteristics of 3D composites. The use of sisal fibers is well explored in the field of automobiles but is yet to be reported for biomedical purposes. Herein, we loaded silanized sisal fibers (SF) in the composite of Poly (ε-caprolactone) and nano-hydroxyapatite (n-HAP) to study its effect on the mechanical and in vitro biological characteristics of the 3D scaffold. The 3D scaffolds synthesized via freeze-drying displayed a bimodal porous structure with enhanced pore size and porosity. The reinforcement of the sisal fibers resulted in a two-fold increase in compressive strength and modulus. The in-vitro cell culture studies established the highly biocompatible nature of the 3D scaffolds containing 5% SF and 10% SF with 30% n-HAP. These results support the exploitation of sisal fiber-loaded green scaffolds in the field of tissue engineering.