Various manufacturing methods and ideal properties of scaffolds for tissue engineering applications

The precision in the design and manufacturing of scaffolds with ideal properties such as biocompatibility, biodegradability, mechanical and surface characteristics is very crucial for applications in tissue engineering. Furthermore, these techniques should be able to translate manufactured scaffolds from bench to potential applications. Numerous fabrication technologies have been employed to design ideal three-dimensional scaffolds with controlled nano-to-micro-structures to achieve the final biological response. This review highlights the ideal parameters (biological, mechanical and biodegradability) of scaffolds for different biomedical and tissue engineering applications. It discusses in detail about the various designing methods developed and used for the fabrication of scaffolds, namely solvent casting/particle leaching, freeze drying, thermal induced phase separation (TIPS), gas foaming (GF), powder foaming, sol-gel, electrospinning, stereolithography (SLA), fused deposition modelling (FDM), selective laser sintering (SLS), binder jetting technique, inkjet printing, laser-assisted bioprinting, direct cell writing and metal based additive manufacturing with a focus on their benefits, limitations and applicability in tissue engineering.