3D electrohydrodynamic printing of highly aligned dual-core graphene composite matrices

Abstract

The aim of this study was to develop an EHD printing method to fabricate grapheneloaded polycaprolactone (PCL)/polyethylene oxide (PEO) dual-core matrices.Graphene was incorporated in shell PCL components, while gelatin and dopamine hydrochloride (DAH) were encapsulated in two PEO cores to enhance biocompatibility of graphene-loaded matrices. Furthermore, the effect of PEO concentration on dualcore fiber formation was evaluated. The influence of process parameters (applied voltage, inner flow rate, outer flow rate and X-Y-Z collector stage speed) on dual-core fiber morphology was evaluated. Our findings show graphene-loaded structures to possess two inner cores and increasing graphene content yields matrices with smoother surfaces, causing a slight reduction in their contact angle behavior. Furthermore, the 2 addition of graphene to matrices results in reduced elasticity. DAH release from matrices comprising various graphene concentrations showed no significant difference and drug release mechanism was diffusion based. In vitro biological tests indicate resulting graphene-loaded dual-core matrices exhibit good biocompatibility and also improve PC12 cell migration. The findings suggest matrices to have potential applications in nerve restoration and regeneration.

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“…With an increase in the applied voltage from 2.5 kV to 3.5 KV, the diameter of the fiber decreased initially, and then increased, which is consistent with the results in the literature. [ 64 ] This is because under a low applied voltage, increasing the voltage can increase the stretch force on the molten polymer, thus, reducing the final diameter of the fiber. However, when the voltage exceeded a certain range, the molten polymer was attracted and fixed on the substrate without enough time to stretch sufficiently under the interaction of strong positive and negative charges between the nozzle and the substrate, increasing the diameter of the fiber.…”

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“…It is this feature that has allowed EHDP to garner attention, which provides EHDP with the ability to achieve smaller printing resolutions and faster printing times compared to similar 3DP setups where an electric field is not incorporated [113][114][115]. EHDP has been applied in pharmaceutics to primarily fabricate films [116][117][118][119][120]. However, EHDP has been reported to produce unstable jets, which can result in large batch-to-batch variation, as well as limited thus far to vertically small products [121,122].…”

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“…h) SEM image of the cross-section of dual-core graphene-based fibers following immersion in deionised water highlighting the hydrophobicity of the electrically engineered fibers. Reproduced from [455]. i) SEM image of the cross section of coaxially electrospun hollow PVP and PCL fibers for potential use in diffusion tensor imaging and fiber tracing.…”