Conformal Fabrication of an Electrospun Nanofiber Mat on a 3D Ear Cartilage-Shaped Hydrogel Collector Based on Hydrogel-Assisted Electrospinning

Abstract

Electrospinning is a common and versatile process to produce nanofibers and deposit them on a collector as a two-dimensional nanofiber mat or a three-dimensional (3D) macroscopic arrangement. However, 3D electroconductive collectors with complex geometries, including protruded, curved, and recessed regions, generally caused hampering of a conformal deposition and incomplete covering of electrospun nanofibers. In this study, we suggested a conformal fabrication of an electrospun nanofiber mat on a 3D ear cartilage-shaped hydrogel collector based on hydrogel-assisted electrospinning. To relieve the influence of the complex geometries, we flattened the protruded parts of the 3D ear cartilage-shaped hydrogel collector by exploiting the flexibility of the hydrogel. We found that the suggested fabrication technique could significantly decrease an unevenly focused electric field, caused by the complex geometries of the 3D collector, by alleviating the standard deviation by more than 70% through numerical simulation. Furthermore, it was experimentally confirmed that an electrospun nanofiber mat conformally covered the flattened hydrogel collector with a uniform thickness, which was not achieved with the original hydrogel collector. Given that this study established the conformal electrospinning technique on 3D electroconductive collectors, it will contribute to various studies related to electrospinning, including tissue engineering, drug/cell delivery, environmental filter, and clothing.

Advanced Hydrogels With Nanoparticle Inclusion for Cartilage Tissue Engineering

“…Choosing appropriate materials and parameters can easily control the properties of the prepared fibers and apply them in a variety of fields. Electrospun nanofibers have the potential for tissue engineering due to their high surface-to-volume ratio and high porosity ( Song et al, 2021 ). The unique fibrous structure is able to withstand the stress experienced in various tissues, which is very much in line with the needs of cartilage scaffolds.…”

Study on uniformity of multi‐needle electrostatic spinning by auxiliary flow field

“…Since the development of electrospinning technology, the characteristics of high porosity, large specific surface area and micro-nano scale diameter have made electrospun nanofibres membrane widely used in various fields of laboratory and industrial fields. Especially in the fields of air filtration [16][17][18], liquid filtration [19], battery separator [20], tissue engineering [21][22][23][24], protective clothing [25,26], skin care mask [27], electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding membrane [28,29] etc., excellent performance of the electrospun nanofibres membrane has been shown, proving that this technology has great potential for development. Various characteristics, such as the material type, diameter and density of nanofiber and the thickness of nanofiber membrane, will affect the performance of electrospun nanofibres membrane, while the diameter distribution of nanofiber and the uniformity of fibre deposition are key factors affecting the overall performance of electrospun nanofibres membrane [11,30,31].…”

A facile one-stone-two-birds strategy for fabricating multifunctional 3D nanofibrous scaffolds

“…Recently, significant efforts have been made to fabricate 3D nanofibrous scaffolds through the advancement of electrospinning technology, such as template-assisted, layer-by-layer, and self-assembly methods. 12–15 These methods are mainly based on modifying the architecture of fiber collectors or incorporating sacrificial fractions. They show an advantage in directly fabricating 3D porous scaffolds over classical electrospinning.…”