RESEARCH HIGHLIGHT

g MATERIAL SCIENCE

Sound absorption of extracted pineapple-leaf fibres

A group of scientists including Iwan Prasetiyo, Ph.D. at Engineering Physics ITB wrote a report of the utilisation of fibres from the pineapple leaf (PALF) to be an alternative natural acoustic material. They fabricated samples from raw pineapple leaf fibres with different densities and thicknesses to observe their effects on the sound absorption characteristic.

Iwan Prasetiyo, Ph.D.

Measurement was conducted for the normal incidence sound absorption coefficient in an impedance tube based on ISO 10534-2. It reveals that the pineapple leaf fibres can achieve sound absorption coefficient of 0.9 on average above 1 kHz by controlling the densities of the fibres and/or by introducing the air gap behind the samples. It is also demonstrated that the sound absorption performance is similar to that of the commercial rock wool fibres and synthetic polyurethane foam.*

3D printing for bone tissue engineering

Materials, Volume 13, Issue 31 February 2020

ITB scientist, Dr. Arie Wibobo lead an international researchers in a study of 3D printing of polycaprolactone-polyaniline electroactive Scaffolds for bone tissue engineering. The researchers said, that electrostimulation and electroactive scaffolds can positively influence and guide cellular behaviour and thus has been garnering interest as a key tissue engineering strategy. The development of conducting polymers such as polyaniline enables the fabrication of conductive polymeric composite scaffolds. In this study, they report on the initial development of a polycaprolactone scaffold incorporating different weight loadings of a polyaniline microparticle filler.

The scaffolds are fabricated using screw-assisted extrusion-based 3D printing and are characterised for their morphological, mechanical, conductivity, and preliminary biological properties. The conductivity of the polycaprolactone scaffolds increases with the inclusion of polyaniline. The in vitro cytocompatibility of the scaffolds was assessed using human adipose-derived stem cells to determine cell viability and proliferation up to 21 days. A cytotoxicity threshold was reached at 1% wt. polyaniline loading. Scaffolds with 0.1% wt. polyaniline showed suitable compressive strength and conductivity for bone tissue engineering applications and demonstrated the highest cell viability at day 1 (88%) with cytocompatibility for up to 21 days in cell culture.*