Abstract
Electrospinning is a promising method to fabricate bioengineered scaffolds, thanks to utilizing various types of biopolymers, flexible structures, and also the diversity of output properties. Mechanical properties are one of the major components of scaffold design to fabricate an efficacious artificial substitute for the natural extracellular matrix. Additionally, fiber orientations, as one of the scaffold structural parameters, could play a crucial role in the application of fabricated fibrous scaffolds. In this study, gelatin was used as a highly biocompatible polymer in blend with cellulose acetate (CA), a polysaccharide, to enhance the achievable range of mechanical characteristics to fabricated fibrous electrospun scaffolds. By altering input variables, such as polymers concentration, weight ratio, and mandrel rotation speed, scaffolds with various mechanical and morphological properties could be achieved. As expected, the electrospun scaffold with a higher mandrel rotation speed shows higher fiber alignment. A wide range of mechanical properties were gained through different values of polymer ratio and total concentration. A general improvement in mechanical strength was observed by increasing the concentration and CA content in the solution, but contradictory effects, such as high viscosity in more concentrated solutions, influenced the mechanical characteristics as well. A response surface method was applied on experimental results in order to describe a continuous variation of Young’s modulus, yield stress, and strain at rupture. A full quadratic version of equations with the 95% confidence level was applied for the response modeling. This model would be an aid for engineers to adjust mandrel rotation speed, solution concentration, and gelatin/CA ratio to achieve desired mechanical and structural properties.
Highlights
Tissue engineering is becoming a promising method to replace conventional transplants which face several limitations, including the lack of donors and insufficient adaption with the immune system of the patient
The results show a complicated interaction between input variables and how they influence mechanical characteristics, where none of the variable effects could be discussed without considering others
Degrees of freedom (DFs) represent the amount of info in the data, adjusted mean squares (Adj MS) calculate a variation of a term by considering all other terms in the model without paying attention to their order, and adjusted sums of squares (Adj SS) are the calculations of variation of different sources listed in the model (Almasvandi et al, 2016)
Summary
Tissue engineering is becoming a promising method to replace conventional transplants which face several limitations, including the lack of donors and insufficient adaption with the immune system of the patient. Tissue engineers are making every effort to design and build different types of tissues to replace the damaged ones (Devices, 2000). Scaffolds are one of the vital parts of the designed tissues. They should meet the characteristics of the natural extracellular matrix (ECM), including biocompatibility, biodegradability, bioactivity, and mechanical properties. Researchers are investigating the determination of scaffold mechanical properties to mimic the original ECM so that the whole designed tissue would work efficiently. Niaza et al (Niaza et al, 2017) designed and modified polylactide-based scaffolds to gain interesting mechanical characteristics with the addition of microparticles/nanoparticles of hydroxyapatite. Yuan et al (Yuan et al, 2017) put much effort into studying pressure characteristic alteration during degradation of a hydrogel scaffold
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