Abstract
Smart materials like piezoelectric polymers represent a new class of promising scaffold in neural tissue engineering. In the current study, the fabrication processing parameters of polyvinylidine fluoride (PVDF) nanofibrous scaffold are found as a potential scaffold with nanoscale morphology and microscale alignment. Electrospinning technique with the ability to mimic the structure and function of an extracellular matrix is a preferable method to customize the scaffold features. PVDF nanofibrous scaffolds were successfully fabricated by the electrospinning technique. The influence of PVDF solution concentration and other processing parameters like applied voltage, tip-to-collector distance, feeding rate, collector speed and the solvent were studied. The optimal parameters were 30 w/v% PVDF concentration, 15 kV applied voltage, 18 cm tip-to-collector distance, 0.5 ml/h feeding rate, 2500 rpm collector speed and N,N′-dimethylacetamide/acetone as a solvent. The mean fiber diameter of the obtained scaffold was 352.9 ± 24 nm with uniform and aligned morphology. Finally, the cell viability and morphology of PC-12 cells on the optimum scaffold indicated the potential of PVDF nanofibrous scaffold for neural tissue engineering.
Highlights
Nerve regeneration is a localized and complex biological phenomenon that prevents or restricts treatment in patients suffering from nervous system injuries
To reach a significant conclusion, each variable was compared to other variables in a separate table and the scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images were categorized in separate pictures
Tuned scaffolds have displayed an effective approach toward neural tissue engineering
Summary
Nerve regeneration is a localized and complex biological phenomenon that prevents or restricts treatment in patients suffering from nervous system injuries. One of the main requirements to accomplish a tissue engineering process is to mimic cellular microenvironment to be appropriate for a specific targeted tissue (Pfister et al 2011) In this regard, several studies have shown that porosity, topography, geometry, density, and mechanical properties of the scaffold besides its chemical and biological characteristics have dominant roles in cell enduring processes (Kim et al 2012). During the last several decades, a variety of fabrication techniques including photolithography, phase separation, colloidal lithography, 3D printing, self-assembly and electrospinning have been studied to fabricate an ideal 3D scaffold with nano/micro features (Schmidt and Leach 2003) Among these techniques, electrospinning of the polymers into fibrous meshes with combination of nanoscale and microscale fibers has exhibited close physical characteristics of
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