Fused Extrusion Material Additive Manufacturing for Mg/PCL Composites

The poor mechanical properties, long degradation time, hydrophobic surface and worse osteoinductive behavior of polycaprolactone (PCL) limit its application to bone tissue repairing. We incorporate Mg micro-particles into the PCL matrix to produce Mg/PCL composite material and fabricate bone repairing substitute by fused extrusion additive manufacture technology. The influences of temperature on quality and evenness of extruded Mg/PCL composite filament are analyzed. The tensile and bending samples are made to verify the influences of printing perimeters on the mechanical properties of Mg/PCL. We fabricate the bone tissue engineering scaffolds with the pore size of 300-500 μm and strut size of 600 μm and observe the scaffold surface morphology by scanning electron microscope (SEM), then customize dog mandible prosthesis. Compared with pure PCL, the tensile and flexible modulus are heightened by 45.6% and 89.6% respectively, while the bending strength is heightened by 27.3%. The more the Mg particle content in PCL matrix, the rougher the surface morphology in SEM. The results show that incorporating Mg particles improves the mechanical properties of PCL, which approach those of human cancellous bone. Mg micro-particles inserted on the PCL matrix promote the surface roughness and hydrophilicity to facilitate cell attachment and growth. © 2019, Editorial Office of Journal of Xi'an Jiaotong University. All right reserved.