Fabrication and Properties of Porous Film/Fabric Composites for Vascular Scaffold Application

A composite vascular scaffold combining textile reinforced structure and biodegradable polymer is introduced, which may possess high porosity and connectivity.Moreover,the porous size could be controlled.The proposed scaffold consists of a warp-knitted poly( ethylene terephthalate)( PET) fabric with well-defined macropores, which is embedded with a porous biodegradable polymer membrane.The aim of this paper is to study the fabrication and properties of porous polymer membrane through optimizing the parameter of composite methods from freeze drying / particle leaching( FD/PL) and gas foaming /particle leaching( GF /PL),subsequently combining with the warp-knitted fabric.Weighing method was utilized to analyze the porosity of the samples and the scanning electron microscope( SEM) images were taken to observe the porous structure of the vascular membrane.In addition,the static contact angle( CA) was measured to estimate the hydrophilicity of the samples, and the tensile testing of the composites was performed on the universal mechanical tester.Furthermore, the water permeability of the membrane was also calculated.The results showed that the porosity and pore connectivity of the vascular membrane were diverse, because of solution concentration, particle size, ratio of content, etc.Meanwhile,the stress-strain curves and the bursting strength showed the different mechanical properties among composite scaffolds in different structures.