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Conceptual Design and Fabrication of Porous Structured Scaffold for Tissue Engineering Applications.

T Kumaresan, R Gandhinathan, M Ramu, M Ananthasubramanian

Today, organ and tissue transplantation remains one of the most important while complex options in order to restore or enhance life expectancy. Though it is a complex option, it is more preferable than other restorations due to its high success rate. The organ and tissue transplantation bring about the idea to generate bone scaffolds using natural bone like materials to treat bone losses, fractures or any other bone related issues. The increasing number of bone losses, critical-sized bone defects, delayed bone unions in orthopedic, drive the quest for bone tissue regeneration. Permanent bone scaffolds implants are usually made of stainless steel or titanium plates. Despite the high success rate of these scaffolds there are several withdrawals such as rust formation leading to bacterial infection and periodic replacement of these steel plates among children due to the gradual growth of the bone. Hence, to overcome the above issues bio-compatible scaffolds must be designed, developed and implanted without causing any harm to the human body. The developed scaffold should also be porous to allow the growth of tissues and nerve endings which enable the union of the bone. Thus, the scaffold should also withstand the stress and should have adequate load bearing capacity. The pore size should also be sufficient enough such that it allows the penetration of the cells and tissues growth. This research work deals with the design of porous scaffold models with different configuration and the selection of suitable material and manufacturing method. The pore geometry and its arrangement are changed in the scaffold. Pores with a cube, sphere shape and their shifted arrangements are considered for this study. The pore size considered is in the range of 800 microns to 1200 microns and the porosity ranges from 40 % to 70 %. The best configuration must be selected based on the strength requirement.