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Abstract
One of the most important issues in bone tissue engineering is the search for new
materials and processing techniques to create novel scaffolds with 3-D porous structures.
Although many properties such as biodegradability and porosity have been considered
in designing bone scaffolds, very limited attention is paid to their capillary effect.
In nature, capillary effect is ubiquitously used by plants and animals to constantly
transport water and nutrients based on morphological and/or chemical gradient structures
at multiple length-scales. In this work, we developed a modified freeze-casting technique
to prepare ceramic scaffolds with gradient channel structures. The results show that
our hydroxyapatite (HA) scaffolds have interconnected gradient channels that mimic
the porous network of natural bone. More importantly, we demonstrate that such a scaffold
has a very unique capillary behavior that promotes the self-seeding of cells when
in contact with a cell solution due to spontaneous capillary flow generated from gradient
channel structures. The strategy developed here provides a new avenue for designing
"smart" scaffolds with complex porous structures and biological functions that mimic
natural tissues.