Fabrication of a biopolymer fibrous scaffold for nerve tissue engineering

Nerve tissue engineering is one of the most promising methods in nerve tissue regeneration. The development of collagen scaffolds can potentially be used in many soft tissue engineering applications. Electrospinning is a polymer processing technique that utilizes an electric field to form fibers from a polymer solution or melt and allows the fabrication of nanofibrous non-woven structures. In this study an attempt was made to develop aligned and random electrospun, nanofibrous scaffolds using collagen. Different parameters in electrospinning process such as solution viscosity, electric field strength, solution flow rate and nozzle to target distance were assessed and optimized to achieve the appropriate scaffold characteristics. To analyze the effect of solution viscosity on fiber diameter, electrospinning was performed using 18, 15, 10 and 7% w/v concentrations. In order to detect the effect of electric field strength, three different experiments were run with electric field strength of 20, 15 and 10 kV, while the other parameters were kept unchanged. Regarding the adjusted electric field, three solution flow rates of 0.2, 0.5 and 0.7 ml/h were set for solution flow rate. Nozzle to target distance parameter was also assessed through three experiments with three distances of 13, 15 and 20 cm. The effects of all these four parameters were traced through the SEM micrographs.

Keywords:

nerve tissue engineering , collagen , electrospinning , scaffold