Progress Towards Laser-based Scaffold Fabrication for Bone Tissue Engineering
J.K. Bagwan and B.B. Ahuja
In bone tissue engineering the use of lasers is increasing continuously because of its ability to fabricate the minute details of the structure which require cells to adhere, migrate and proliferate. The important properties that a scaffold should contain are biocompatibility, biodegradability, mechanical strength, bioactivity, and porosity. In bone tissue engineering, the architectural design as well as porosity design of the scaffold plays a very important role as it directly provides homing to the bone cells to live, migrate and proliferate, and to bind with host tissues. The tailored porosity in the material is still a challenging task; however, this can be taken care of by the use of lasers in the scaffold fabrication. Herein is an up to date perspective of the significance of lasers and laser parameters in fabricating the tailored scaffolds with different materials like metals, polymers, ceramics and composite biomaterial for bone tissue engineering application. The problem of low adherence of cells on the metals and polymers is been solved by the lasers by increasing the grooves, surface roughness and wettability. The ceramics and composites are also successfully fabricated with controlled porosity by modulating laser parameters. This review will guide the researcher in bone tissue engineering area with different materials and fabrication of the porous architectural design.
Keywords: Lasers, biomaterials, scaffold, cells, bone tissue engineering, additive manufacturing (AM), laser additive manufacturing (LAM), selective laser sintering (SLS)