Vegatc software

The samples of the scaffolds were fixed with a 2.5% phosphate-buffered glutaraldehyde solution (pH 7.4) for 2 h at 4 °C in the dark, and were then washed with a phosphate-buffered saline. The samples were dehydrated by transfer through ethanol solutions with increasing concentrations of 10, 20, 50, 70, and 96% for 1 h in each concentration, and incubated in acetone for 30 min.
The samples were then exposed to critical point drying (31 °C, 72.8 kg/cm²) by the Quorum K850 Critical Point Dryer (Quorum Technologies, Lewes, UK). The dried samples were coated with a gold layer with a thickness of 10 nm in an argon atmosphere at 20 mA of ion current and 1 mbar of pressure by the Q150R ES rotary-pumped coating system (Quorum Technologies, Lewes, UK). The samples were analyzed using the Tescan Vega3 SBU scanning electron microscope (Tescan, Brno, Czech Republic) with an operating voltage of 15 kV. Imaging was performed by VegaTC software (Tescan, Brno, Czech Republic).

The samples of the constructions were fixed with a 2.5% of phosphate-buffered glutaraldehyde solution (pH 7.4) for 2 h at 4 °C in the dark; then, they were washed with phosphate-buffered saline. The samples were dehydrated using ethanol (10%, 20%, 50%, 70%, and 96% water solutions, 1 h in each concentration) and were incubated in acetone for 30 min.
The prepared samples were exposed to the critical point drying (31 °C, 72.8 kg/cm²) using the Quorum K850 instrument (Quorum Technologies, Lewes, UK). Sections of samples were prepared by scalpel and positioned inclined on the SEM platform for analysis. The dried samples were coated with a 10 nm gold layer in an argon atmosphere at an ion current of 20 mA and a pressure of 1 mbar using the Q150R ES rotary pumped coating system (Quorum Technologies, Lewes, UK). The samples were analyzed using the Tescan Vega3 SBU scanning electron microscope (Tescan, Brno, Czech Republic), with an operating voltage of 15 kV. Imaging was performed using VegaTC software (Tescan, Brno, Czech Republic).