title: An overview of inverted colloidal crystal systems for tissue engineering.
abstract: Scaffolding is at the heart of tissue engineering but the number of techniques available for turning biomaterials into scaffolds displaying the features required for a tissue engineering application is somewhat limited. Inverted colloidal crystals (ICCs) are inverse replicas of an ordered array of monodisperse colloidal particles, which organize themselves in packed long-range crystals. The literature on ICC systems has grown enormously in the past 20 years, driven by the need to find organized macroporous structures. Although replicating the structure of packed colloidal crystals (CCs) into solid structures has produced a wide range of advanced materials (e.g., photonic crystals, catalysts, and membranes) only in recent years have ICCs been evaluated as devices for medical/pharmaceutical and tissue engineering applications. The geometry, size, pore density, and interconnectivity are features of the scaffold that strongly affect the cell environment with consequences on cell adhesion, proliferation, and differentiation. ICC scaffolds are highly geometrically ordered structures with increased porosity and connectivity, which enhances oxygen and nutrient diffusion, providing optimum cellular development. In comparison to other types of scaffolds, ICCs have three major unique features: the isotropic three-dimensional environment, comprising highly uniform and size-controllable pores, and the presence of windows connecting adjacent pores. Thus far, this is the only technique that guarantees these features with a long-range order, between a few nanometers and thousands of micrometers. In this review, we present the current development status of ICC scaffolds for tissue engineering applications.
authors: 1 CENIMAT/I3N, Departamento de Ciência dos Materiais, Faculdade de Ciências e Tecnologia, FCT, Universidade Nova de Lisboa , Caparica, Portugal .
authors: Carlos Filipe C
authors: CF
authors: João
authors: Joana Marta
authors: JM
authors: Vasconcelos
authors: Jorge Carvalho
authors: JC
authors: Silva
authors: João Paulo
authors: JP
authors: Borges
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001672:Biocompatible Materials / Q000737:chemistry; D003102:Colloids / Q000737:chemistry*; D003460:Crystallization; D006801:Humans; D023822:Tissue Engineering / Q000379:methods; D054457:Tissue Scaffolds / Q000737:chemistry
chemical_list: D001672:Biocompatible Materials; D003102:Colloids