A “room-temperature” injection molding/particulate leaching approach for fabrication of biodegradable three-dimensional porous scaffolds

A “room-temperature” injection molding approach combined with particulate leaching (RTIM/PL) has been, for the first time, developed in this work to fabricate three-dimensional porous scaffolds composed of biodegradable polyesters for tissue engineering. In this approach, a “wet” composite of particulate/polymer/solvent was used in processing, and thus the injection was not performed at melting state. Appropriate viscosity and flowability were facilely obtained at a certain solvent content so that the composite was able to be injected into a mould under low pressure at room temperature, which was very beneficial for avoiding thermal degradation of polyesters. As a demonstration, tubular and ear-shaped porous scaffolds were fabricated from biodegradable poly(d,l-lactide-co-glycolide) (PLGA) by this technology. Porosities of the resulting scaffolds were as high as 94%. The pores were well interconnected. Besides the well-known characteristics of injection molding to be suitable for automatization of a fabrication process with high repeatability and precision, this RTIM/PL approach is much suitable for tailoring highly porous foams with its advantages flexible for shaping complicated scaffolds, free of thermal degradation and high-pressure machine, etc.