Fabrication of polylactic acid/halloysite nanotube scaffolds by foam injection molding for tissue engineering

This study presents the improvement of mechanical properties and cell viability of polylactic acid/halloysite nanotube (PLA/HNT) scaffolds that were fabricated by foam injection molding. In this regard, firstly PLA and HNT were compounded on a twin screw extruder by melt mixing method within the HNT loadings of 1, 3, 5 wt%. Then, neat PLA and PLA/HNT pellets were foam injected molded to obtain tensile test samples. The mechanical properties of the scaffolds were determined by tensile test and methyl-thiazol-tetrazolium technique was used for determination of cell viability. The results have shown that the scaffold with 3 wt% of HNT addition gave the highest mechanical strength among the fabricated scaffolds with 124.2% and 79.2% of increments in tensile strength and elongation, respectively. Also, 3 wt% of HNT demonstrated the highest cell viability among the obtained scaffolds due to its improved scaffold morphology.