Preparation of Small-Diameter Silk Fibroin Tubular Scaffolds with Electrospinning Method

Abstract

In recent years, electrospinning has received much attention to prepare porous tubular scaffold due to electrospun nanofibers mat, which can mimic the structure characteristics of the extracellular matrix (ECM). In the present paper, silk fibroin (SF) tubular scaffolds with small-diameter were prepared by electrospinning from regenerated silk fibroin (RSF) aqueous solutions with rotating mandrel collector. The morphology and fiber diameter distribution of SF tubular scaffolds were influenced much by the concentration of regenerated silk fibroin (RSF) solution, collecting distance and mandrel diameter. The results showed that SF tubular scaffold, which was in flat surface with smaller fiber diameter and uniform distributed, could be obtained at the concentration of 22%, collection distance of 10 cm and mandrel diameter of 4 mm. The structure of SF tubular scaffolds before and after ethanol treatment was characterized by FTIR and XRD. After ethanol treatment, the SF tubular scaffolds had a conformation transition from random-coil conformation to Silk II conformation.