Preparation and In Vitro Thermo-Mechanical Characterization of Electrospun PLGA Nanofibers for Soft and Hard Tissue Replacement

摘要

In this paper, aligned PLGA nanofibrous scaffolds were synthesized by electrospinning for tissueengineering. Morphological characterization showed highly aligned nanofibrous morphology withnearly uniform diameter less than 200 nm and porosity reaches to 73%. The FTIR results showed nochanges in the FTIR spectra whether the material is in the bulk or nanofiber form. The thermo- mechanical properties were characterized by using thermogravimetry (TG) and differential scanningcalorimetry (DSC). The results of thermal analysis confirmed that the amorphous nature of PLGA withglass transition temperature of the electrospun sheet is lower than that of the raw PLGA due to highsurface area. The results of dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) showed a strong dependence of thevisco-elastic behavior of PLGA nanofibers in terms of the frequency and the temperature criteria as thestorage modulus (G increases at the time the loss modulus (G欌 decreases with frequency. In vitrodegradation behaviors of PLGA nanofibrous scaffolds were systematically investigated up to twentyo weeks in phosphate buffer saline solution at 37 C. The visco-elastic behavior of PLGA nanofibrousscaffolds were evaluated during in-vitro degradation. As degradation time increases, the PLGAscaffolds show more weight loss and reduction in the storage modulus. The value of storage moduluswas less than the half of its initial values after 12 weeks. In a ward, the aligned nanofibrous scaffoldsused in this study constitute a promising material for tissue engineering.