Mechanical Competencies and Fluid Absorption Profiles of Electrospun Polylactide Nanocomposite Fibres for Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine Applications

Abstract

The mechanical, morphological and fluid permeability tendencies of agro-waste-reinforced Polylactic acid (PLA) composite fibres were explored. Treated and untreated rice husk fillers were composited with PLA pellets in dichloromethane and virgin and rice husk-reinforced composite fibres of PLA were produced through solution electrospinning. The samples were subjected to mechanical, morphological and fluid imbibition tests. The porous beads-in-string structures of reinforced PLA as seen from the morphological analyses were considered responsible for the greater fluid absorption capacity of the composites. The morphology was also found to dictate the mechanical properties of the samples with bead-free virgin PLA fibres showing stronger mechanical tendencies, but low fluid imbibition capacity. Two-way analysis of variance indicated that, unlike the effect of filler structural strength, due to alkali treatment, which statistically affected impact energy (p = 9×10-4) and ductility (p = 2.12×10-4), the effect of filler weight per cent showed no statical significance. Statistically, the fluid imbibition capacity was found to be significantly affected by both the filler structural strength and the filler weight per cent. The competencies displayed by the fibres show that they can find applications in wound dressing and tissue engineering purposes.