Preliminary Study of Trong Clay – HA Bone Scaffold Fabrication Using Solvent Casting/Particulate Leaching Method and Indirect 3D-Printing Technique

Abstract

This paper is about the feasibility of using the combination of Trong clay and hydroxyapatite for the fabrication of bone tissue scaffold. Trong clay is one of Perak’s (a state in Malaysia) natural resources which can be potentially used as a biomaterial. Two methods were involved in the scaffold fabrication: the solvent casting/particulate leaching method and the indirect three-dimensional printing method. It is found that the solvent casting/particulate leaching method was not able to produce tissue scaffold as intended. However, tissue scaffolds made using indirect three-dimensional printing were able to be fabricated using the 9:1 Trong clay-HA ratio. It was found also that the scaffolds with lower percentage of Trong clay were more fragile and brittle. In this study, the scaffolds produced using this technique have an interconnected porous structure with approximately 500μm pores diameter observed using Field Emission Scanning Electron Microscope (FESEM).