Fractal Design Boosts Extrusion-Based 3D Printing of Bone-Mimicking Radial-Gradient Scaffolds

Abstract

Although extrusion-based three-dimensional (EB-3D) printing technique has been widely used in the complex fabrication of bone tissue-engineered scaffolds, a natural bone-like radial-gradient scaffold by this processing method is of huge challenge and still unmet. Inspired by a typical fractal structure of Koch snowflake, for the first time, a fractal-like porous scaffold with a controllable hierarchical gradient in the radial direction is presented via fractal design and then implemented by EB-3D printing. This radial-gradient structure successfully mimics the radially gradual decrease in porosity of natural bone from cancellous bone to cortical bone. First, we create a design-to-fabrication workflow with embedding the graded data on basis of fractal design into digital processing to instruct the extrusion process of fractal-like scaffolds. Further, by a combination of suitable extruded inks, a series of bone-mimicking scaffolds with a 3-iteration fractal-like structure are fabricated to demonstrate their superiority, including radial porosity, mechanical property, and permeability. This study showcases a robust strategy to overcome the limitations of conventional EB-3D printers for the design and fabrication of functionally graded scaffolds, showing great potential in bone tissue engineering.