Porous poly(l-lactic acid) sheet prepared by stretching with starch particles as filler for tissue engineering

• Porous PLLA was fabricated by uniaxial stretching method.
• The starch particles were used as filler which resulted in the pores.
• The starch particles were removed by selective enzymatic degradation.
• The porous PLLA could be used in tissue engineering.

Porous poly(l-lactic acid) (PLLA) sheets were prepared by uniaxial stretching PLLA sheets containing starch filler. Here, the starch filler content, stretching ratio, stretching rate and stretching temperature are important factors to influence the structure of the porous PLLA sheets, therefore, they have been investigated in detail. The pore size distribution and tortuosity were characterized by Mercury Intrusion Porosimetry. The results revealed that the porosity and pore size enlarged with the increase of the starch filler content and stretching ratio, while shrank with the rise of stretching temperature. On the other hand, the pore structure almost had no changes with the stretching rate ranging between 5 and 40 mm/min. In order to test and verify that the porous PLLA sheet was suitable for the tissue engineering, the starch particles were removed by selective enzymatic degradation and its in vitro biocompatibility to osteoblast-like MC3T3-E1 cells was investigated.