Precision extruding deposition and characterization of cellular poly-epsilon-caprolactone tissue scaffolds

Successes in scaffold guided tissue engineering require scaffolds to have specific macroscopic geometries and internal architectures to provide the needed biological and biophysical functions. Freeform fabrication provides an effective process tool to manufacture many advanced scaffolds with designed properties. This paper reports our recent study on using a novel precision extruding deposition (PED) process technique to directly fabricate cellular poly-epsilon-caprolactone (PCL) scaffolds. Scaffolds with a controlled pore size of 250 mum and designed structural orientations were fabricated.