Surface Functionalization of 3D-Printed Scaffolds with Seed-Assisted Hydrothermally Grown ZnO Nanoarrays for Bone Tissue Engineering

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

Bioactive metal-based nanostructures, particularly zinc oxide (ZnO), are promising materials for bone tissue engineering. However, integrating them into 3D-printed polymers using traditional blending methods reduces the cell performance. Alternative surface deposition techniques often require extreme conditions that are unsuitable for polymers. To address these issues, we propose a metal-assisted hydrothermal synthesis method to modify 3D printed polycaprolactone (PCL) scaffolds with ZnO nanoparticles (NPs), facilitating the growth of ZnO nanoarrays (NAs) at a low-temperature (55 °C). Physicochemical characterizations revealed that the ZnO NPs form both physical and chemical bonds with the PCL surface; chemical bonding occurs between the carboxylate groups of PCL and Zn(OH)