Scaffold Diffusion & Stiffness Match Lab

Advanced biomaterials must do three things at once inside a living body: release therapeutic agents at a controlled rate, resorb into the tissue without leaving toxic residue, and keep a mechanical stiffness close enough to the host tissue that neither the implant nor the tissue around it is overloaded. This lab simulates all three together around a single scaffold. A real explicit finite-difference solver spreads a diffusing field outward from the implant through a 3D tissue grid (∂C/∂t = D∇²C). The scaffold's own mass resorbs with first-order bulk-erosion kinetics (M(t)=M₀e^(−kt)), and its effective Young's modulus falls with that mass loss, so pulling on the scaffold later in its life shows a very different stress response than pulling on it fresh. Switch between a natural collagen scaffold, a synthetic PLGA scaffold and a PLGA-collagen hybrid to see how each is tuned to a different real tissue interface, and watch when the mechanical match breaks down as the material degrades.