Electrospinning of Nanocomposite Fibrillar Tubular and Flat Scaffolds with Controlled Fiber Orientation

Abstract

Electrospinning was used in innovative electrospinning rigs to obtain tubular and flat fibrous structures with controlled fibre orientation with the aim to be used as scaffolds for biomedical applications, more specifically in the tissue engineering of vascular and orthopaedic grafts.Gelatine and hydroxyapatite (HA)-gelatine solutions of various compositions were tried and electrospinning of continuous fibres was maintained for gelatine and up to 0.30 g/g HAgelatine solutions in 2,2,2-trifluoroethanol (TFE). Small diameter tubular scaffolds were electrospun with axial fibre orientation and flat scaffolds were cut from fibre mats electrospun around a wired drum substrate. The fibrous mats were crosslinked using a glutaraldehyde solution and subjected to image analysis of SEM micrographs, water swelling tests, and mechanical testing. Fibre diameter in the electrospun scaffolds could be varied depending on the feed solution concentration and composition whereas fibre orientation was affected by the processing conditions. After crosslinking, the 0.30 g/g HA-gelatine scaffolds absorbed the minimum amount of water after 48 h soaking and they had the highest Young's modulus, 60 MPa, and highest strength, 3.9 MPa.

γ-Fe2O3 nanoparticles filled polyvinyl alcohol as potential biomaterial for tissue engineering scaffold

“…Previous studies have reported the range of parameter settings of the electrospinning process on various polymeric blends using fiber diameter as their sole response for consideration (Abdal-hay et al, 2013;Brun et al, 2011;Ha et al, 2013;Haslauer et al, 2012;Salifu et al, 2011;Wang and Wang, 2012;Zhang, 2011). In fact, we have also done some work on electrospinning process for PVA blends (Fallahiarezoudar et al, 2015).…”

Hybrid Woven Glass Fibre Fabric-Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotube-Epoxy Composites Under Low Rate Impact

“…Wide-line electrospinning was devised in this study with a new design complimenting the rotating wired drum collector of our previous work [33]: the innovation comprised a feeding device with a wide, perforated bottom line-edge over the whole length of the drum collector, aiming at achieving homogeneously distributed and aligned electrospun nanofibres across the drum wires. The electrospinning process was then optimised to coat a glass fibre fabric with a mixture of aligned MWNT-epoxy fibres and spray under 30 kV DC over a distance of 180 mm between the feed edge and the rotating drum collector.…”

“…Figure 1 presents a diagram of the electrospinning rig. The electrospinning rig consisted of a rotating drum collector with parallel wires lengthwise [33], a high voltage power supply and a syringe pump. The syringe system consisted of a syringe pump, a 5 mL syringe, a feed tube and an exit needle.…”

Electrospun oriented gelatin‐hydroxyapatite fiber scaffolds for bone tissue engineering

“…To date, many electrospun gelatin‐HA fiber scaffolds have been fabricated for bone tissue engineering, but typically low mechanical properties have been reported; such as a Young's modulus of 326 MPa and a tensile strength of 5 MPa for a 20 wt % HA‐gelatin scaffold with random fiber orientation . Following the hypothesis that fiber orientation would improve the mechanical performance of the scaffold, a preliminary study by our group of producing scaffolds with fiber orientation yielded 60 and 3.9 MPa in the fiber direction for a 30 g/g HA‐gelatin scaffold for the Young's modulus and tensile strength, respectively; it is obvious that this fiber‐oriented scaffold had not reached its full potential in mechanical properties which was attributed to the fact that the processing conditions of electrospinning were not optimized in that preliminary study …”