Electrospinning: processing technique for tissue engineering scaffolding

Abstract

Electrospinning has attracted tremendous interest in the research community as a simple and versatile technique to produce synthetic polymeric ultrafine fibres with diameters ranging from a few micrometres to tens of nanometres. Recently, some natural origin polymers have also been successfully electrospun. Owing to their very small diameter, polymeric nanofibres exhibit unusual properties such as high specific surface area, flexibility in surface functionalities and superior mechanical properties. In addition, electrospun non-woven meshes could physically mimic the extracellular matrix structure of native tissues. These remarkable properties render electrospun nanofibres useful for many applications, particularly those related to the field of biomedical engineering. The first part of this review is intended to provide a fundamental survey of the electrospinning process (apparatus, governing parameters) and of recent improvements of the technique, including associated structural modifications of polymeric nanofibre meshes. The prospective tissue engineering/biomedical applications of electrospun polymeric nanofibres are then reviewed, namely, wound dressings, medical prostheses, drug delivery systems, DNA release and tissue engineering scaffolds. The essential properties of scaffolds in terms of the structural features of electrospun nanofibre meshes are discussed. Finally, the future perspectives for applications of electrospun nanofibres, particularly in the field of tissue engineering, are considered.

Controlled gentamicin release from multi-layered electrospun nanofibrous structures of various thicknesses

“…7,15 Various processing techniques have been used to produce nanofibers. 1,[16][17][18] However, the electrospinning technique allows the production of continuous polymeric nanofibers and provides numerous opportunities to modify and control their Dovepress submit your manuscript | www.dovepress.com morphological parameters, such as surface area, fiber diameter, the porosity of the nanofibrous layer (fiber density), basis weight, 19 or internal fiber structure. 18,20,21 Nanospider™ electrospinning technology is based on a needleless method in which polymeric jets are spontaneously formed from liquid surfaces 22,23 and allows the production of fibers with diameters ranging from tens of nanometers to tens of micrometers.…”

Plasma Science and Technology - Progress in Physical States and Chemical Reactions

“…Electrospinning (ES) of polymers was already patented for the first time in 1939, but it was not until the early 1990 that a renewed interest in the 1D scaffold fabrication technique made it into the popular tool that it is today [38][39][40][41][42][43]. A typical ES machine consists of three major parts (see Figure 9): 1) a needle pump, feeding a polymer solution, at a certain flow, into the ES spinning chamber; 2) a high voltage source that is connected to the needle; 3) a grounded collector plate at a distance x from the needle.…”

Electrospinning of Cross-Linked Magnetic Chitosan Nanofibers for Protein Release

“…Different methods are reported to produce biomimetic non-woven materials comprising a large network of interconnected fibers and pores (1,2). A large number of biomacromolecules, such as poly(ε-caprolactone), poly(lactic acid), poly(lactide-coglycoside), collagen, and gelatin have been successfully fabricated into non-woven mats by the electrospinning method (3)(4)(5).…”

“…This work seeks to explore efficient loading of drugs and the possibility to achieve controlled release from scaffold by means of magnetic properties and therefore offers an important biomedical material. 2 O with molar ratio of 1.5:1 was prepared under ultrasonic agitation via ultrasonication (10 min, 100 W) to ensure homogenous mixing, subsequently ultracentrifuged, and black precipitate was produced immediately by adding sodium hydroxide. Dried nitrogen gas was inflated during synthesis in a closed system to prevent the oxidization of ferrous ions.…”