Fabrication of PLA-HAp-CS Based Feed-Stock Filament by Twin-Screw Extrusion Using Matrix Co-Relation

Abstract

The fabrication of biocompatible and biodegradable scaffolds/ implants is one of the requirements in biomedical and tissue engineering (TE) applications. It has been established that biocompatible thermoplastic polymers are one of the best materials for the replacement of metallic implants/scaffolds due to their better mechanical properties and cost-effectiveness. In the past two decades number of studies has been reported on biocompatible thermoplastic polymers. But hitherto very less has been reported on fabrication of biocompatible feedstock filament by reinforcement of chitosan (CS) and hydroxyapatite (HAp) in polylactic acid (PLA) thermoplastic polymer using twin-screw extruder (TSE). This research work is focused on the preparation of biocompatible grade of fused deposition modeling (FDM) feedstock filament by using HAp and CS as reinforcement in PLA matrix. Based on reported literature different compositions/ proportions of PLA-HAp-CS were selected and feedstock filament has been prepared using TSE on the optimized setting. Finally, a co-relationship matrix has been prepared for different mechanical properties of feed stock filament.