Polylactide microparticles stabilized by chitosan graft-copolymer as building blocks for scaffold fabrication via surface-selective laser sintering

Surface-selective laser sintering (SSLS) is a specific version of selective laser sintering, which allows one to fabricate 3D structures with well-defined architectonic via selective melting of microparticle surface without alteration of their core. This mode of laser sintering requires a well-designed surface properties of the microparticles to adsorb laser irradiation. Water was chosen as safer sensitive absorber of laser radiation with a wavelength of 1.9 μm, i.e. one with low absorption coefficient by polymeric core. Biodegradable polylactide microparticles were fabricated via oil/water emulsion solvent evaporation technique using tailored-made chitosan-based macromolecules, which provided the effective interface stabilization during the microparticle fabrication and well balanced microparticle surface hydrophilicity to adsorb water. Especially build SSLS set-up was designed in order to monitor the effectiveness of the 3D scaffold fabrication from the obtained microparticles and to adapt the optimal laser radiation parameters with a wavelength of 1.9 μm (e.g. speed, line density, power).