Preparation, characterization and evaluation of biomass-based silicon-containing composite scaffolds for bone repair

It has become an important direction for the development of bone tissue engineering to produce organic-inorganic composite bone repair scaffolds by imitating the precise structure of natural bone. Biomass materials such as collagen, gelatin, chitosan and silk fibroin are attracting more and more attention due to their excellent biological properties. On the other hand, silicon-containing bioactive materials are becoming important inorganic components in the preparation of bone repair scaffolds due to their favorable bone conductivity and bone inductivity. In this text, we introduced primarily two kinds of complex technology of components for manufacturing bone scaffolds, including the powder complex technology and in-situ complex technology, and strategies of fabricating structure of bone scaffolds, such as the freeze drying, electrostatic spinning, biomimetic mineralization and the 3D printing technology. We emphatically summarized the research progress of biomass-based bone repair scaffolds containing silicon materials, and elucidated that the current challenges were to prepare a bone scaffold possessing the appropriate mechanical properties, the favorable porous structure, and the matching performance of its biodegradation behavior with the new bone formation rate. Finally, the development trend of bone scaffold materials was discussed as well. © 2019, Chemical Industry Press. All right reserved.