Threedimensionally patterned, hierarchically and anisotropically structured bacterial cellulose

Abstract

Structuring cellulosic materials is an important step towards realizing emerging technologies, such as so-called engineered living materials, and improving on established ones, such as tissue engineering. In this work, we present a route for the preparation of cellulose monoliths exhibiting a three-dimensional pattern on the macroscopic scale, together with structural anisotropy in the cellulose fiber level. This was achieved by rheotactic growth, i.e. under flowing medium, of bacterial cellulose over a 3D-printed dissolvable template. The surrounding setup was realized using commercially available components. Here, we report on and discuss structural properties of cellulose monoliths obtained by this process, such as shrinkages during processing, the strut densities of 50 mg cm−3, preferred orientations of cellulose within the struts, and the pore size distributions, which were determined from nanoscale-precision silica replica.