Electrospun silk-based nanofibrous scaffolds: fiber diameter and oxygen transfer

Abstract

In this study, silk fibroin was extracted from cocoons of silkworms and fabricated into nonwoven mats by electrospinning method. A new model based on the group method of data handling (GMDH) and artificial neural network (ANN) was developed for estimation of the average diameter of electrospun silk fibroin nanofibers. In this regard, concentration, flow rate, voltage, distance, and speed of collector were used as input parameters and average diameter of the fibers was considered as output parameter. Two models were capable to estimate average diameter of fibers with good accuracy. The average absolute relative deviation for GMDH and ANN models was equal to 3.56 and 2.28 %, respectively. Furthermore, due to importance of oxygen delivery to site of injury to promote wound healing, continuity equation for mass transport was employed for prediction of oxygen profile in the system containing wound dressing and skin. The result showed that our prepared wound dressing is capable to pass the oxygen completely to the skin layer and is not acting as a barrier for oxygen delivery to wound site. Since average nanofibers diameter can influence the mat physical, mechanical and biological properties then this model may serve as a useful guide to obtain tailor made and uniform silk nanofibers at various combinations of process variables.

Application of ANN modeling techniques in the prediction of the diameter of PCL/gelatin nanofibers in environmental and medical studies

“…[14][15][16][17][18] Despite important experimental investigations to determine ber diameter, using scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and atomic force microscopy for example, it is still time-consuming and expensive. 18,19 Furthermore, complexities in the electrospinning method and many factors simultaneously affecting the preparation techniques cause the ndings from statistical tools, such as response surface methodology and regression analysis, to be very noisy. 16,20 Regression analysis is one of the traditional techniques that has been used for model generation but the accuracy decreases when the independent parameters increase.…”

Silk Fibroin and Spidroin Bioengineering Constructions for Regenerative Medicine and Tissue Engineering (Review)

“…As the average diameter of the nanofibers affects the mechanical and biological properties of these products, they can be manufactured with appropriate features as required [137].…”

Piezoelectric electrospun nanocomposite comprising Au NPs/PVDF for nerve tissue engineering

“…The basic principle of this technique is based on generating the direct movement of charged molecules by applying high voltage to supply the ejection of a liquid jet through spinneret from the polymer solution droplet …”

“…11,[28][29][30][31] The basic principle of this technique is based on generating the direct movement of charged molecules by applying high voltage to supply the ejection of a liquid jet through spinneret from the polymer solution droplet. [32][33][34] Composites can be formed simply by the addition of a composite component to the electrospinning solution. 35 Thereby, composite fibers, functional fibers and fibers with complex structure can be prepared by electrospinning of polymers with additional compounds.…”