Designing silk-based 3D architectures with controlled lamellar morphology

• Author(s): Oliveira, A. L. ; Sun, L. ; Kim, H. J. ; Hu, X. ; Rice, W. ; Kluge, J. ; Reis, R. L. ; Kaplan, D. L.
• Date: 2008
• Persistent ID: https://hdl.handle.net/1822/59169
• Origin: RepositóriUM - Universidade do Minho
• Document Type: Other
• Language: English
• Contributor(s): Universidade do Minho

Description

[Excerpt] The impressive mechanical properties, along with established biocompatibility and slow degradability, render silk as an interesting biomaterial for bone tissue engineering applications. New silk-based scaffolds resembling bone lamellar structure were successfully developed using a freeze-drying technique. The structure could be controlled directly by the solute concentration and freezing parameters. The lamellar scaffolds disclosed a controlled and regular morphology (lamellar thickness: µ3.5 mm; interlamelar distance: µ15 mm). In order to induce water stability, different posttreatments were studied including methanol treatment, water annealing and steam sterilization. [...]