Li Changfeng, Li Dongying, Xu Yong, Chen Peng, Zhang Jianfei, Zhou Yanrong, Li Zonghan, Zhou Zixiong, Chen Meigui, Li Mengqi
College of Mechanical and Energy Engineering, Shaoyang University Shaoyang 422000 China.
Key Laboratory of Hunan Province for Efficient Power System and Intelligent Manufacturing, Shaoyang University Shaoyang 422000 China
RSC Adv. 2025 Mar 18;15(11):8430-8442. doi: 10.1039/d5ra00010f. eCollection 2025 Mar 17.
The mechanical insufficiency and slow degradation of polycaprolactone (PCL) implants have attracted widespread attention among researchers. Herein, a PCL scaffold with self-setting properties containing calcium sulfate hemihydrate (CSH) was prepared using a triply periodic minimal surfaces (TPMS) design and selective laser sintering (SLS) technology. The results showed that the strength of the scaffold containing 10 wt% CSH was increased by 45.5% compared to the PCL one. More importantly, its strength can be further increased to 1.7 times that of the PCL scaffold after self-setting in water. Mechanism analysis suggests that mechanical strengthening can be attributed to the pinning effect through the newly grown columnar crystals embedded with PCL molecular chains. In addition, the degradation rate of the composite scaffold was approximately 6.8 times higher than that of the PCL one. The study believes that the increase in degradation rate is due to a dual effect, specifically the increase in permeability and the catalytic degradation of PCL in the acidic environment. Encouragingly, the composite scaffold showed a good ability to induce hydroxyapatite formation. Therefore, the self-setting mechanically enhanced composite scaffold is expected to have potential application prospects in bone defect repair.
聚己内酯（PCL）植入物的机械性能不足和降解缓慢已引起研究人员的广泛关注。在此，采用三重周期极小曲面（TPMS）设计和选择性激光烧结（SLS）技术制备了一种含有半水硫酸钙（CSH）的具有自固化性能的PCL支架。结果表明，与PCL支架相比，含有10 wt% CSH的支架强度提高了45.5%。更重要的是，在水中自固化后，其强度可进一步提高到PCL支架的1.7倍。机理分析表明，机械增强可归因于通过嵌入PCL分子链的新生长柱状晶体产生的钉扎效应。此外，复合支架的降解速率约为PCL支架的6.8倍。该研究认为降解速率的提高是由于双重作用，具体而言是渗透性的增加以及PCL在酸性环境中的催化降解。令人鼓舞的是，复合支架表现出良好的诱导羟基磷灰石形成的能力。因此，这种自固化机械增强复合支架有望在骨缺损修复中具有潜在的应用前景。
