Selective Laser Foaming for Three-Dimensional Cell Culture on a Compact Disc

Abstract

A selective laser foaming process is developed to fabricate three-dimensional (3D) scaffold on a commercially available compact disc (CD) made of polycarbonate (PC). The laser-foamed 3D structure could be utilized to form high throughput perfusion-based tissue model device. In this study, effects of significant parameters and the morphology of porous structure were analyzed. As a result, laser foaming of gas saturated polycarbonate creates inverse cone-shaped wells with 3D porous structure on the surface region and the pores are tens of micrometers in diameter. The size of the well is dependent on the laser power and laser exposure time. The pore size relies on the gas concentration in the PC CD samples. The fabricated micro-scale porous scaffolds will be used to create centrifugal force driven two-chamber tissue model system arrays for high throughput drug testing.