Plasma Modification of PCL Porous Scaffolds Fabricated by Solvent‐Casting/Particulate‐Leaching for Tissue Engineering

Abstract

The improvement of scaffold performances as cell carriers in a tissue implant is still a\ud challenge in tissue engineering. Since cells in contact with a scaffold firstly sense its top\ud surface before interacting with its macro-/micro-porous structure, the insertion of chemical\ud motifs within the body of the scaffold could improve cell\ud colonization through its entire structure. In this study,\ud combinations of plasma deposition and treatment processes\ud have been employed to create chemical gradients inside\ud polycaprolactone porous scaffolds, whose micro-morphology\ud has been finely characterized with synchrotron radiation\ud computed micro-tomography. The graded chemical composition\ud of these scaffolds has successfully allowed the\ud increase of cell viability with respect to untreated materials

Plasma Science and Technology - Progress in Physical States and Chemical Reactions

“…Six years later, this research was picked up again by the same group in collaboration with the University of Bari, resulting in the publication of two papers by Intranuovo et al [94,95]. In the first paper, published in 2011, a very similar experiment was conducted involving lowpressure RF pulsed plasma polymerization of allylamine, with very similar results when it comes to gradient deposition.…”

Allylamine and Allyl Alcohol Plasma Copolymerization: Synthesis of Customizable Biologically‐Reactive Three‐Dimensional Scaffolds

“…After characterizing the functionality and chemical composition of films deposited with the allylNH/OH copolymerization system on 2D substrates, we expanded pulsed plasma treatments to 3D PCL scaffolds. Based on previous studies of plasma treatment of similar scaffold materials, we anticipated films deposited on the scaffold exterior to be compositionally similar to those deposited on 2D substrates under the same treatment conditions. Our results generally support this hypothesis, specifically with respect to nitrogen and oxygen content on scaffold exteriors (Figure c).…”

Innovative Applications of Surface Wettability Measurements for Plasma‐Modified Three‐Dimensional Porous Polymeric Materials: A Review

“…In this study, the plasma‐treated scaffolds exhibited a larger hysteresis value than untreated scaffolds, indicating that the plasma treatment induced changes to either the surface chemistry and/or surface topography. The authors attributed larger hysteresis values to increased chemical inhomogeneity in their surfaces introduced by the second plasma treatment . No specific data are presented, however, that directly support this claim.…”