3D-Printed Bioactive Ca3SiO5 Bone Cement Scaffolds with Nano Surface Structure for Bone Regeneration

Silicate bioactive materials have been widely studied for bone regeneration because of their eminent physicochemical properties and outstanding osteogenic bioactivity, and different methods have been developed to prepare porous silicate bioactive ceramics scaffolds for bone-tissue engineering applications. Among all of these methods, the 3D-printing technique is obviously the most efficient way to control the porous structure. However, 3D-printed bioceramic porous scaffolds need high-temperature sintering, which will cause volume shrinkage and reduce the controllability of the pore structure accuracy. Unlike silicate bioceramic, bioactive silicate cements such as tricalcium silicate (Ca3SiO5 and C3S) can be self-set in water to obtain high mechanical strength under mild conditions. Another advantage of using C3S to prepare 3D scaffolds is the possibility of simultaneous drug loading. Herein, we, for the first time, demonstrated successful preparation of uniform 3D-printed C3S bone cement scaffolds with co...