Table 2.

An overview of pore characteristics of biocomposite materials fabricated with different methods.

Biocomposite Material	Fabrication Method	Application	Pore Characteristics	Reference
Chitosan/PLA	Melt molding and particulate (NaCl) leaching	Scaffold	The pore sizes were larger than 100 µm and all the pores including inner pores were interconnected. Porosity increased with the weight fraction of NaCl.	[52]
Chitosan/PLA	Freeze drying	Scaffold	Scaffold with interconnected porous structures and pore size around 100–500 µm was obtained. The pore size of the scaffolds decreased with increasing lactic acid/chitosan feed ratio. The chitosan scaffold had a porosity of 62.3% and pore size of 500 µm, and the lactic acid/chitosan scaffold (4:1, wt/wt) had a porosity of 34.37% and pore size of 100 µm.	[53]
Chitosan/PLA	Mold casting/infrared dehydration	Scaffold	Well-distributed 0.2 µm pores on the surface of the conduit was formed.	[54]
PLA/nanocellulose	Electrospinning	Release of nonionic compounds	There was no significant difference in the mean pore size between the nonwoven fabrics electrospun from PLA containing 0% and 1% cellulose nanocrystals. The mean pore size increased twice as big with PLA containing 10% cellulose nanocrystals. The mean pore sizes of the PLA nonwoven fabrics with 0%, 1% and 10% of cellulose nanocrystals were 0.48 ± 0.04 µm, 0.51 ± 0.08 µm and 0.94 ± 0.14 µm, respectively.	[59]
Cellulose/chitosan	Freeze drying	Sorption of trimethylamine and metal ions	The mean pore diameter was within the range of 100–300 μm. The pore diameters decreased with increasing chitosan concentration.	[60]
Cellulose/chitosan	Freeze drying	Dye adsorption	The beads were nanoporous with pore sizes from 10 nm to 20 nm.	[62]
Bacterial cellulose nanofiber/chitosan	Freeze drying	Scaffold	After the bacterial cellulose was treated by chitosan, porous structure remained but pore sizes became larger. Nanofibrous bacterial cellulose and bacterial cellulose/chitosan composite had well interconnected pore network structure.	[63]
Chitosan/PLGA	Electrospinning	Scaffold	In the electrospinning process, the spinning parameters, solution viscosity, polymer concentration, applied voltage, and flow rate highly influenced the porosity and pore size distribution of the composite material.	[64]
Chitosan/PLGA nanocomposite	Electrospinning and unidirectional freeze-drying	Scaffold	The porosity was found to be more than 96% and it decreased with increasing the chitosan concentration.	[65]
Chitosan/PLGA nanocomposite	Electrospinning and freeze drying	Scaffold	The porosity of chitosan/PLGA nanocomposite scaffolds decreased with increasing the chitosan solution concentration and electrospinning time.	[66]
Chitosan/collagen	Freeze drying	Scaffold	The chitosan scaffold showed the pore sizes between 500 and 700 µm while the chitosan/collagen composite scaffold showed a smaller pore sizes of 100–400 µm. The addition of collagen decreased the pore size of the composite scaffold. All samples composed of different proportions of chitosan and collagen showed porosities higher than 90%. The addition of collagen did not change the porosity.	[68]
Chitosan/collagen	Freeze drying	Scaffold	The mean pore size of the scaffold increased from 100 μm to >200 μm by crosslinking with glutaraldehyde. Elongated pores were formed with high concentration of glutaraldehyde. Refreeze-drying induced the fusion of some smaller pores to generate larger ones.	[69]
Chitosan/collagen	Freeze drying	Scaffold	At the highest chitosan/collagen ratio (75/25), the gels showed a sponge-like structure with larger pores than the gels containing lower chitosan content for both crosslinked and uncrosslinked scaffolds.	[71]