Organic solvent free preparation of porous scaffolds based on the phase morphology control using supercritical CO2

Porous polylactide (PLA) scaffolds for tissue engineering were successfully manufactured from co-continuous PLA/polyvinyl pyrrolidone (PVP) blends by combining annealing treatment in supercritical carbon dioxide (scCO(2)) and porogen leaching. Based on the water solubility of PVP, the employment of organic solvents could be completely avoided during the fabrication of scaffolds. The average pore size ranges from 30 mu m to 160 mu m with nearly full interconnectivity, and strongly associates with the treatment conditions of annealing process, indicating that the morphology of porous scaffolds can be availably controlled by adjusting CO2 pressure, temperature and annealing time. Moreover, it was found that the average pore size of porous PLA scaffolds fabricated by annealing in scCO(2) was larger than that in atmosphere at the same temperature, this signified that porous PLA scaffolds could be achieved at a lower temperature with the introduction of scCO(2), which effectively improved the mechanical property of PLA scaffolds. (C) 2019 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.