Page 156 - Tailoring Electrospinning Techniques for Regenerative Medicine - Marc Simonet

CHAPTER 7
Figure 7.8 (a) Near field electrospun, respectively electrohydrodynamic printed poly(vinylidene fluoride) (adapted from ref. 35 with permission of American Chemical Society), (b) melt electrospun poly(e-caprolactone) (adapted from ref. 36 with permission of Elsevier), (c) straight jet electrospun polyurethane, unpublished work.
(Figure 7.8b). Less frequently used techniques are stable jet electrospinning (Figure 7.8c), notably a technique o en used to maximize the electrospun fiber diameters.
One needs to be aware, that a single technique might not provide all the answers required for a regenerative medicine success story. But in creating sca olds by combining various additive manufacturing techniques and their strengths, for example some of the electrospinning techniques with cell plotting, lies a strong potential for regenerative medicine applications.31,33 Such hybrid sca olds with complementary structural features enable a multiscale construct design with more and spatially defined incorporated construct features as for example displayed in Figure 7.6.
7.4 Conclusion
Lack of reproducibility and cell infiltration where two of the most reported challenges for the electrospinning technique. As shown in this thesis, performing electrospinning in a tightly controlled environment greatly minimizes the reproducibility issues this technique was facing. Moreover, being able to adjust the environmental conditions, especially the relative humidity, allows to adjust fiber morphologies and sca old characteristics.
With the introduced Low-temperature electrospinning technique, ice crystals from the ambient relative humidity are used as pore templates to increase the fiber spacing in the otherwise densely packed fibrous sca olds. These ice crystals can
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