RESEARCH ARTICLE Binary phase solid-state photopolymerization of acrylates: design, characterization and biomineralization of 3D scaffolds for tissue engineering Inamullah MAITLO, Safdar ALI, Muhammad Yasir AKRAM, Farooq Khurum SHEHZAD, and Jun NIE (✉) State Key Laboratory of Chemical Resource Engineering & Beijing Laboratory of Biomedical Materials, Beijing University of Chemical Technology, Beijing 100029, China © Higher Education Press and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany 2017 ABSTRACT: Porous polymer scaffolds designed by the cryogel method are attractive materials for a range of tissue engineering applications. However, the use of toxic cross- linker for retaining the pore structure limits their clinical applications. In this research, acrylates (HEA/PEGDA, HEMA/PEGDA and PEGDA) were used in the low-temperature solid-state photopolymerization to produce porous scaffolds with good structural retention. The morphology, pore diameter, mineral deposition and water absorption of the scaffold were characterized by SEM and water absorption test respectively. Elemental analysis and cytotoxicity of the biomineralized scaffold were revealed by using XRD and MTT assay test. The PEGDA-derived scaffold showed good water absorption ability and a higher degree of porosity with larger pore size compared to others. XRD patterns and IR results confirmed the formation of hydroxyapatite crystals from an alternative socking process. The overall cell proliferation was excellent, where PEGDA-derived scaffold had the highest and the most uniform cell growth, while HEMA/PEGDA scaffold showed the least. These results suggest that the cell proliferation and adhesion are directly proportional to the pore size, the shape and the porosity of scaffolds. KEYWORDS: binary phase solid-state photopolymerization; phase separation; tissue engineering; biomineralization; MTT Contents 1 Introduction 2 Experimental 2.1 Materials 2.2 The fabrication of porous polymer scaffold 2.3 Biomineralization of Ca –P on porous scaffold 2.4 Characterization 2.5 MTT assay and cell adhesion 3 Results and discussion 3.1 Morphology of porous scaffold 3.2 Polymerization kinetics 3.3 Biomineralization 3.4 XRD characterization 3.5 FTIR analysis 3.6 Thermal stability 3.7 MTT assay and cell adhesion 4 Conclusions Disclosure of potential conflicts of interests Acknowledgement References Received June 13, 2017; accepted July 26, 2017 E-mail: niejun@mail.buct.edu.cn Front. Mater. Sci. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11706-017-0394-8