A novel electrospinning setup for the fabrication of thickness-controllable 3D scaffolds with an ordered nanofibrous structure

Abstract

Electrospinning is a popular nanotechnology used to produce fibrous scaffolds from a wide range of materials. For tissue regeneration and bioengineering applications, there is a growing interest in fabricating tailored 3D scaffolds with a complex tissue-like structure, i.e., nanometer diameter, aligned fibers and controllable thickness that may be suitable for specific organs and tissues. However, conventional electrospinning techniques can only produce either 2D aligned nanofibrous structures with limited thickness or 3D fibrous scaffolds with disordered fibrous structures. In this study, a novel electrospinning setup using a parallel double thin plate collector device and a separate fiber removal device was developed to generate 3D electrospun scaffolds with aligned nanofibers and controllable thickness. As a demonstration, the formation mechanism of the ordered fibrous structure was analyzed, and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) was processed into fibrous scaffolds. The nanofibrous membranes possessed a high alignment degree with approximately 76% of the fibers within ±5° and tailored thicknesses from 69.6 to 1144.9μm.