Electrospinning of Gelatin Nanofibre: Current Trends in Tissue Engineering Applications

摘要

Electrospinning is considered to be one of the most successful methods for producing nanofibres due to its versatility in terms of process flexibility and broader range of materials. Thus far, most of the works reported on electrospinning evolve on the synthetic biodegradable polymer for dozens of applications in medicine, energy, transportation and electronic devices. In biomedical applications, synthetic biodegradable polymers such as polyester regularly associated with poor biocompatibility and systemic or local reaction resulted from the acidic degradation products [1]. Therefore, naturally occurring polymers such gelatin has been widely explored due to its biocompatibility, biodegradability, hydrophilic in nature and commercial availability at low cost. Pure gelatin has successfully been electrospun using 2,2,2-trifluoroethanol into nanofibres with a diameter range of 100 to 340 nm [2]. However, pure gelatin electro spun nanofibre exhibited poor mechanical properties and even worse with the formation of beads. Beadsare known to be the defects in nanofibres, because they interrupt the uniformity in structure and property of electrospun nanofibres, and reduce the surface area to volume ratio. Nevertheless, the formation of beads in the gelatin nanofibres has been manipulated as drug reservoir for medical therapeutic applications as the beaded nanofibres prolonged the release of active compound compared to smooth nanofibres [3].