Development of PVA/gelatin nanofibrous scaffolds for Tissue Engineering via electrospinning

Abstract

The electrospinning process is an emerging and relatively easy technique to prepare three-dimensional matrices with micro- and nanofibers. To achieve it, aqueous polymer solutions from synthetic or natural polymers are used. PVA was selected as polymer and gelatin because of its biocompatibility and biodegradability. A complete characterization of the polymeric solutions (density, surface tension, etc) was previously performed. Subsequently, a standard electrospinning process (15 kV, 0.4 ml h−1 and 10 cm) was carried out to obtain scaffolds. The influence of the polymer concentration and the protein addition was observed by performing FTIR analyses and studied by analyzing the water contact angle and SEM images.