Electrospun production techniques

Electrospinning techniques enable the production of continuous fibers with dimensions on the scale of nanometers from a wide range of natural and synthetic polymers [135]. The number of recent studies regarding electrospun polysaccharides and their derivatives, which are potentially useful for regenerative medicine, is dramatically increasing. 

A gas-solid reaction was further introduced to the electrospiiming technique to incorporate semiconductor nanostructures into polymer nanofibers with better dispersion. The production of well-dispersed PbS nanoparticles in polymer fiber matrices has been achieved by this method (Lu et al., 2005). First, metal salt and polymer were codissolved into one solvent to make a homogeneous solution. Then the above solution was electrospun to obtain polymer/metal salt composite nanofibers. The composite nanofibers were finally exposed to HaS gas at room temperature to synthesize PbS nanoparticles in situ in polymer nanofibers. 

Moreover, there were other reports on the electrospun PI composite Qin et al. reported the fluorescent performance of electrospun PI web mixed with hemicyanine dye (Figure 9), pointed out that the nano fiber structure were helpful to the fluorescence (Qin et al., 2009) Cheng et al. reported the preparation of nonwoven Pl/silica hybrid fabrics by combining electrospinning and controlled in situ sol-gel techniques, their product had better mechanical and thermal properties than ordinary PI electrospun fabrics (Cheng et al., 2009). 

Electrospinning technique has proved to be efficient in nanofibers production for diverse applications such as biomedical applications, liquid crystal devices, nanofiltration, etc. However, it has been very promising technique for tissue engineered scaffolds fabrication. This reiterates the fact that through this technique, it is possible to fabricate scaffolds by resembling the namral ECM inside human body. The features of electrospun nanofibers can be manipulated so that (i) the dimensions of nanofibers could resemble the namral tissue fibers dimensions in the body and (ii) the scaffolds porosity could be manipulated to mimic that of the namral tissues inside the body. High porosity is mandatory in scaffolds for better fluid perfusion and cell proliferation. 

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