Designing apatite/wollastonite (A/W) porous scaffolds by powder-based 3D printing

Efforts in the field of traumatology have been focusing the development and application of scaffolds for supporting bone regeneration of critical sized defects. Especially in cases involving customized intervention, Additive Manufacturing technologies (AM) facilitate the direct conversion of patient data into an implantable scaffold of a specific material system. Previous work has successfully demonstrated a new approach in the field of scaffold design based on multi-resolution volumetric modeling methods. In order to adapt the scaffold micro-structure to the specific requirements of porous scaffold processing, an optimized data set based on an original spongiosa-like structure was generated and manufactured by 3D printing using a bioactive ceramic system with an apatite/wollastonite composition. The final thermal treatment of the ceramic system had to be adapted to the geometrical requirements of the newly designed micro-scaled scaffolds in order to avoid the complete collapse of the final parts.