Development and degradation behavior of magnesium scaffolds coated with polycaprolactone for bone tissue engineering

• The Mg scaffolds produced by powder metallurgy technique.
• Polycaprolactone was coated on the surface of Mg scaffolds.
• The scaffolds with PCL coating exhibited lower degradation compared to uncoated one.

Rapid degradation of magnesium (Mg) alloys is the major drawback preventing these materials from being applicable as tissue engineering scaffolds. In order to resolve this issue, in this paper, porous Mg scaffolds coated by polycaprolactone (PCL) were synthesized and their material properties and in vitro biodegradation were fully examined. The results indicated that PCL coating can significantly enhance the compressive strength and degradation resistance of Mg scaffolds. We showed that while the uncoated Mg scaffold degrades completely (100% weight loss) after 72 h, the degradation (weight loss) of the Mg scaffolds coated by 3% and 6% PCL is only 36% and 23%, respectively. Thus PCL-coated Mg scaffolds, as a biodegradable metal scaffold, can potentially have a promising application in bone tissue engineering.