ABSTRACT
Highly porous, hydrophilic porous matrices were fabricated by using a high internal phase supercritical-CO2 (scCO2) emulsion templating technique. The novel aspect of the work resides in the combination of a natural biopolymer (dextran) as the building component of the matrices and of an environmentally benign solvent (supercritical-CO2) as the pore-generating phase. The synthetic route to the porous biomaterials involved the preliminary functionalization of the dextran chains with methacrylic moieties, formation of a scCO2-in-water concentrated emulsion, and curing of the external phase of the emulsion by radical polymerization. As the emulsion stabilizer a perfluoropolyether surfactant was chosen. The matrices obtained exhibit highly interconnected, trabecular morphologies. The porous biomaterial morphologies were qualitatively characterized by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and the evaluation of void and interconnect sizes was carried out on the micrographs taken with the light microscope. To tailor the morphologies of the porous structures, the influence of the volume fraction of the internal phase and of the surfactant/internal phase ratio was investigated. It was established that the variation of the volume fraction of the internal phase exerted only a limited influence on void and interconnect sizes. On the contrary the increase of surfactant concentration alters dramatically the distribution of void size, a large proportion of the void space enclosed within the matrix being attributable to voids with a diameter exceeding 100 microm. The free toxic solvent process of fabrication of the porous structures, the high water content, the expected biocompatibility, and the mechanical properties that resemble natural tissues make these porous hydrogels potentially useful for tissue engineering applications.
