Hybrid hierarchical fabrication of three-dimensional scaffolds

Three-dimensional (3D) porous structures facilitating cell attachment, growth, and proliferation is critical to tissue engineering applications. Traditional solid freeform fabrication (SFF) methods have limited capabilities in the fabrication of high resolution micro-scale features to implement advanced biomedical functions. In this work, we present a hybrid scaffold fabrication approach by integrating electrohydrodynamic (EHD) printing technology with extrusion deposition together to fabricate hierarchical 3D scaffolds with well controlled structures at both macro and micro scale. We developed a hybrid fabrication platform and a robust fabrication process to achieve 3D hierarchical structures. The melting extrusion by pneumatic pressure was used to fabricate 3D scaffolds with filaments dimension of hundreds of microns using thermoplastic biopolymer polycaprolactone (PCL). An electrohydrodynamic (El-ID) melt jet plotting process was developed to fabricate micro-scale features on the scaffolds with sub-10 mu m resolution, which has great potential in advanced biomedical applications, such as cell alignment and cell guidance. (C) 2013 The Society of Manufacturing Engineers. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.