Nanofibrous structure morphologies

Li WJ, Laurencin CT, Caterson EJ, Tuan RS, Ko FK (2002) Electrospun nanofibrous structure a novel scaffold for tissue engineering. J Biomed Mater Res 60 613-621 Deitzel JM, Kleinmeyer J, Harris D, Tan NCB (2001) The effect of processing variables on the morphology of electrospun nanofibers and textiles. Polymer 42 261-272 Gopal R, Kaur S, Ma ZW, Chan C, Ramakrishna S, Matsuura T (2006) Electrospun nanofibrous filtration membrane. J Membr Sci 281 581-586... 

The usage of electrospim nanofibrous candidates for biomedical applications has attracted much research attention in the past several years. Such material with flexible structural morphology have been demonstrated as suitable substrates for tissue engineering, affinity membranes, wound dressing and controlled drug delivery. 

Scientists have fabricated scaffolds in a two-step approach that combines an in situ coprecipitation synthesis route with the electrospinning process to prepare a novel type of biomimetic nanocomposite nanofibres of HA/CHT. The electrospun composite nanofibres of HA/CHT, with compositional and structural features close to the natural mineralised nanofibril counterparts, are of potential interest for bone TE. The results of HA/CHT indicate that although an initial inhibition occurs, the nanofibrous scaffolds which contained HA, as compared to scaffolds of CHT alone, appeared to have significantly stimulated the bone forming ability as shown by the cell proliferation, mineral deposition, and morphological observations, due to the excellent osteoconductivity of HA [19, 34, 56, 70]. 

Fig. 5 AFM height images demonstrating the effect of pH on the morphology of self-assembled ELP-CdSe nanostructures (a) random aggregates, (b) lace-like structures, (c) nucleation of unidirectional structures and (d) disruption of nanofibres. Reprinted with permission fi om Fahmi et al. [34], Copyright, 2010, Wiley-VCH...

Bhattarai et al. developed a novel biodegradable electrospun membrane as a scaffold for tissue engineering. A nanofibrous matrix of poly(p-dioxanone-co-L-lactide)-block-poly(ethylene glycol) (PPDO/PLLA-b-PEG) copolymer was evaluated for cell proliferation and its morphology of cell-matrix interaction. The electrospun structure composed of fibers with an average diameter of 380 nm, medium pore size 8 mm, porosity greater than 80% and mechanical strength of 1.4 MPa is favorable for cell-matrix interaction [39]. 

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