Air plasma treated chitosan fibers-stacked scaffolds

Chitosan is a nontoxic, biodegradable and biocompatible polymer. Rapid prototyped chitosan scaffolds were manufactured by liquid-frozen deposition of chitosan fibers in this study. To investigate if the air plasma (AP) treatment could be used to improve the surface properties of these scaffolds for cell attachment, chitosan films were first prepared and treated with AP under different conditions. Under the optimized condition, the water contact angle of chitosan films was significantly reduced from 90 ± 1° to 19 ± 1° after AP treatment. On the other hand, the surface charge and nanometric roughness of chitosan films increased after AP treatment. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy measurement on AP-treated three-dimensional chitosan scaffolds showed that nitrogen and oxygen increased at each location inside the scaffolds as compared to the untreated ones, which indicated that AP could permeate through the fibrous stacks of the scaffolds and effectively modify the interior (visible) surface of the scaffolds. Moreover, AP treatment enabled the migration of MC3T3-E1 cells into the scaffolds, facilitated their proliferation and promoted the bone mineral deposition. These results suggested that fibers-stacked chitosan scaffolds may be produced by liquid-frozen deposition and treated with AP for bone tissue engineering applications.