ABSTRACT
One of the major goals of tissue engineering is the development of 3D porous biodegradable scaffolds able to stimulate cells growth and to induce tissue healing and self-repair. Compressed fluids, such as carbon dioxide, are excellent candidates for biomaterials processing and porous scaffold fabrication as they allow the development of clean and toxic-free processes for scaffold fabrication that are beneficial to cells and biological tissues. The aim of this chapter is to provide to the reader an overview about current strategies to design and fabricate porous polymeric scaffolds for tissue engineering by means of compressed fluids. Furthermore, the materials/processing/structure relationship of scaffolds prepared by supercritical fluids plus combined approaches is described to suggest possible strategies for advanced scaffold manufacturing.
