Preparation of Porous Biodegradable Polymer and Its Nanocomposites by Supercritical CO2Foaming for Tissue Engineering

Xia Liao,Haichen Zhang,Ting He

doi:10.1155/2012/836394

Abstract

Using supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO2) as an alternative to conventional methods in the preparation of porous biodegradable polymer and polymer/nanocomposites for tissue engineering has attracted increasing interest in recent years due to the absence of using organic solvents and the ability to incorporate thermosensitive biologicals without loss of bioactivity. Additionally, scCO2can exert a high level of control over porosity and morphology of scaffolds by tuning the processing parameters. This paper describes the newly achievements on the preparation of porous polymer materials using scCO2foaming technology with focus on the porous biodegradable materials and its nanocomposites relevant to tissue engineering.

Highlights

Tissue engineering involves the use of cells to repair the damaged biological tissue, leaving only natural substances to reestablish organ function [1, 2]
ScCO2 foaming technology has been utilized to overcome the drawbacks of conventional scaffold fabrication methods
As supercritical CO2 (scCO2) foaming method can operate under mild conditions without the use of organic solvents and take advantage of the tunable properties of the fluid phase, an increasing interest in preparing porous scaffold using scCO2 foaming technology for tissue engineering is continuously growing

Summary

Introduction

Tissue engineering involves the use of cells to repair the damaged biological tissue, leaving only natural substances to reestablish organ function [1, 2]. Numerous methods have been developed to generate highly porous biodegradable polymer or its composites for tissue engineering, which include phase separation, emulsion freeze-drying, solvent casting/salt leaching, fiber forming, and 3D printing [5, 9,10,11,12,13,14]. These conventional methods, generally involve the use of potentially harmful organic solvents in the fabrication process. The applications of scCO2 foaming technology in the preparation of biodegradable porous polymer, especially its use in generation of porous nanocomposite materials for tissue engineering will be introduced

Supercritical CO2 Foaming

Preparation of Porous Biodegradable Materials for Tissue Engineering

Findings

Summary