Morphological Properties of Poly (vinyl alcohol)/Gelatin contained Indonesian Carbonated Hydroxyapatite Abalone Nanofibrous Scaffold by Electrospinning

Abstract

One strategy for dealing with bone defects is replicating and reconstructing artificial bone for bone tissue engineering (BTE) application, known as the scaffold. Bone consists of an extracellular matrix (ECM) which, at the nanoscale, has a fibrous structure that can be replicated in synthetic scaffolds using an electrospinning method. This work describes the analysis of the morphological properties of Poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA)/Gelatin contained Indonesian carbonated hydroxyapatite (CHA) abalone nanoparticle scaffold by electrospun nanofiber. CHA nanoparticles were produced using a co-precipitation method, and nanofibrous PVA/Gelatin/CHA 5 wt% scaffold was fabricated by electrospinning. The synthesized CHA produced the same condition as B-type CHA, ensured by Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR), X-Ray Diffractometer (XRD), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) tests. The morphological properties of PVA/Gelatin/CHA are analyzed using Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM). The SEM image indicated that PVA/Gelatin nanofiber tended to have a fine morphology without beads. The agglomeration of the PVA/Gelatin/CHA 5 wt% nanofiber scaffold can be neglected because it is still on the sub-micron scale (1 μm–100 nm). Moreover, adding CHA 5 wt% in the PVA/Gelatin matrix decreased the average fiber diameter. The diameter fiber results are within the fiber diameter range (100–450 nm) in native bone ECM. Therefore, PVA/Gelatin/CHA 5 wt% has the potential to serve as an alternative scaffold material for BTE application.