Abstract
Electroactive biomaterials are fascinating for tissue engineering applications because of their ability to deliver electrical stimulation directly to cells, tissue, and organs. One particularly attractive conductive filler for electroactive biomaterials is silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) because of their high conductivity, antibacterial activity, and ability to promote bone healing. However, production of AgNPs involves a toxic reducing agent which would inhibit biological scaffold performance. This work explores facile and green synthesis of AgNPs using extract of Cilembu sweet potato and studies the effect of baking and precursor concentrations (1, 10 and 100 mM) on AgNPs’ properties. Transmission electron microscope (TEM) results revealed that the smallest particle size of AgNPs (9.95 ± 3.69 nm) with nodular morphology was obtained by utilization of baked extract and ten mM AgNO3. Polycaprolactone (PCL)/AgNPs scaffolds exhibited several enhancements compared to PCL scaffolds. Compressive strength was six times greater (3.88 ± 0.42 MPa), more hydrophilic (contact angle of 76.8 ± 1.7°), conductive (2.3 ± 0.5 × 10−3 S/cm) and exhibited anti-bacterial properties against Staphylococcus aureus ATCC3658 (99.5% reduction of surviving bacteria). Despite the promising results, further investigation on biological assessment is required to obtain comprehensive study of this scaffold. This green synthesis approach together with the use of 3D printing opens a new route to manufacture AgNPs-based electroactive with improved anti-bacterial properties without utilization of any toxic organic solvents.
Highlights
Inspired by the nature of the human body and the tiny electrical current present within them, electrical stimuli has emerged as one of the most promising types of external stimulation methods that can be used to enhance the rate of tissue regeneration and modulate cellular specialization [1,2,3]
This study aims to produce AgNPs through green synthesis approach and assess the feasibility of the obtained AgNPs as an electroconductive and antibacterial filler in polymeric bone scaffolds
The study showed that AgNPs were successfully prepared by a facile green synthesis approach using extract of Cilembu sweet potatoes, without requiring any harmful reducing agent and high temperature/pressure
Summary
Inspired by the nature of the human body and the tiny electrical current present within them, electrical stimuli has emerged as one of the most promising types of external stimulation methods that can be used to enhance the rate of tissue regeneration and modulate cellular specialization [1,2,3]. Electroactive scaffolds have been successfully used for bone [4,5,6], neural [1,7], muscles [8], and cardiac tissue engineering applications [9,10]. Polymeric-based materials have been shown to be a prime candidate for bone tissue engineering applications, due to their highly flexible and tailorable properties, ease of fabrication, excellent biocompatibility, and the possibility to be degraded over time in physiological media [11]. One strategy to fabricate electroactive scaffolds is by using an intrinsically conductive polymer as its sole material, currently available options are fairly limited as they require the presence of conjugated π-electron backbone. The most widely used conductive polymers are poly [3,4-(ethylenedioxy)thiophene]
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