The Crystallization Behavior of Porous PLA Prepared by Modified Solvent Casting/Particulate Leaching Technique for Potential Use of Tissue Engineering Scaffold

Abstract: The porous PLA foams potential for tissue engineering usage are prepared by a modified solvent casting/particulate leaching method with different crystallinity. Since in typical method the porogens are solved in the solution and flow with the polymers during the casting and the crystallinity behavior of PLA chains in the limited space cannot be tracked, in this work the processing is modified by diffusing the PLA solution into a steady salt stack. With a thermal treatment before leaching while maintaining the stable structure of the porogens stack, the crystallinity of porous foams is made possible to control. The characterizations indicate the crystallization of porous foams is in a manner of lower crystallibility than the bulk materials. Pores and caves of around 250{\mu}m size are obtained in samples with different crystallinity. The macro-structures are not much impaired by the crystallization nevertheless the morphological effect of the heating process is still obvious.