Jiahuan Shen

Master student

3D Printing of Bioactive Glass Scaffolds by Stereolithography Technology

 

Supervisors: Marcela Arango-Ospina, Prof. Aldo R. Boccaccini

3D scaffolds play an important role in tissue engineering since they provide physical support for the formation of new tissues. For this purpose, a scaffold for bone tissue engineering needs to satisfy some properties such as bioactivity, biodegradability, high porosity and mechanical stability [1]. Bioactive glasses have been proven to be the first synthetic materials that can be bonded to bone and have been successfully applied to the regeneration of bone tissue [2]. In this study, different silicate bioactive glass compositions will be used to produce 3D porous structures. ICIE16 is an interesting silicate glass because it does not crystallize during the sintering like the traditional bioactive glass 45S5 while maintaining its bioactivity [3, 4]. The scaffolds will be produced by 3D printing by stereolithography (SLA) technology. SLA uses UV curing resin to print the finished product [5], therefore a suitable photosensitive resin needs to be selected to prepare the slurry for printing. The resulting scaffolds will be characterized in terms of morphology, chemical composition and mechanical behavior and they will be compared with scaffolds developed by the standard foam replica technique.

[1] G. Chen, T. Ushida, T. Tateishi; Scaffold Design for Tissue Engineering. Macromol. Biosci. 2002, 2, 67-77.

[2] L. Hench; Opening paper 2015- Some comments on Bioglass: Four Eras of Discovery and Development, Biomed. Glasses 2015, 1, 1-11.

[3] I. Elgayar, et al.; Structural analysis of bioactive glasses. J. Non-Cryst. Solids 2005, 351, 173–183.

[4] F. Westhauser, F. Hohenbild, M. Arango-Ospina, S. I. Schmitz, S. Wilkesmann, L. Hupa, A. Moghaddam, A. R. Boccaccini; Bioactive Glass (BG) ICIE16 Shows Promising Osteogenic Properties Compared to Crystallized 45S5-BG. Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2020, 21, 1639.

[5] T. D. Ngo, A. Kashani, G. Imbalzano, Kate T.Q. Nguyen, D. Hui; Additive manufacturing (3D printing): A review of materials, methods, applications and challenges. Composites Part B 2018, 143, 172–196.