This study presents a new innovative method where electrospinning is used to coat single microfibers with nanofibers. The nanofiber-coated microfibers can be formed into scaffolds with the combined benefits of tailored porosity for cellular infiltration and nanostructured surface morphology for cell growth. The nanofiber coating is obtained by using a grounded collector rotating around the microfiber, to establish an electrical field yet allow collection of nanofibers on the microfiber. A Teflon tube surrounding the fibers and collector is used to force the nanofibers to the microfiber. Polycaprolactone nanofibers were electrospun onto polylactic acid microfibers and scaffolds of 95 and 97% porosities were made. Human chondrocytes were seeded on these scaffolds and on reference scaffolds of purely nanofibers and microfibers. Thereafter, cellular infiltration was investigated. The results indicated that scaffold porosity had great effects on cellular infiltration, with higher porosity resulting in increased infiltration, thereby confirming the advantage of the presented method.
In this work a new method is presented to efficiently produce hydrogel scaffolds reinforced with nanofibers to show enhanced mechanical properties and improved structural integrity. The method is based on a combination of air brush spraying of a hydrogel and electrospinning of nanofibers. With air brush spraying the controllability is enhanced and the potential for scale-up increased. The developed method was used to successfully reinforce gellan gum hydrogels with electrospun polycaprolactone nanofibers. Optical and rheological evaluations were performed and showed that parameters such as the amount of incorporated nanofibers, gellan gum concentration and calcium chloride (crosslinker) concentrations could be used to modulate material properties. Incorporation of a small amount of nanofibers had a reinforcing effect and resulted in a hydrogel with rheological properties similar to the human nucleus pulposus (NP). The method is flexible and carries potential for designing scaffolds for e.g. NP tissue regeneration.
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