Page 54 - Tailoring Electrospinning Techniques for Regenerative Medicine - Marc Simonet

CHAPTER 2
2.5 Conclusions
In this study, the influence of environmental conditions during electrospinning on dimensions, surface morphology, and orientation were assessed. While fiber diameters remained constant, surface morphology was strongly influenced by both temperature and relative humidity. Additionally the nature of the surface morphology can be a ected by the water miscibility of the solvent. Our evidences, matched with those already present in literature, lead to the conclusion that the morphology of a single fiber results from a complex interaction between polymer, solvent and water vapor, governed by thermodynamic and kinetic of the phase behavior of the ternary system.
Additionally a new self-assembling of a vertical array of fibers was presented. The mechanism behind
might follow the same principle as the already reported 3 dimensional honeycomb stacks, but in this case the fiber stack themselves in an array of vertical monolayers due the fast rotating target. This self- assembling is a simple and straightforward method to obtain highly aligned porous 3D electrospun materials which could be of great interest in many fields such as tissues regeneration, which requires biomaterials that can mimic architectures of the human body, a topic of present and future research, also in our group.
2.6 Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank Martin van Drongelen for helping with the FFT analyses.
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