Preparation and performance control of poly(lactic acid) fiber/polyurethane composite porous biomimetic-aligned scaffolds

Because of important potential and application prospect of aligned scaffolds in tissue engineering, it is necessary to prepare aligned scaffolds different from previous methods. We have prepared poly(lactic acid) fiber/polyurethane adhesive composite-aligned scaffolds by 1000 poly(lactic acid) melt parallel arrangement fibers and different polyurethane contents at 5, 10, 20, 25, and 30% separately. It can be found that polyurethane contents have great influence on bonding effect between fiber and adhesive, surface and cross-sectional morphology, thickness, weight, contact angle, stress and strain, pore diameter, porosity, pore interconnectivity, water absorption, and gelatin impregnation. The maximum of pore diameter and porosity of aligned scaffolds can be achieved to 64.24 µm and 66.67% by controlling poly(lactic acid) fiber parallel arrangement and polyurethane adhesive content. Moreover, the ultimate stresses of aligned scaffolds are 3.47 MPa along length direction and 1.02 MPa in width direction. Each composite-aligned scaffold has better fiber parallel arrangement, pore structure, and stress.