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

Abstract

In this paper, aligned PLGA nanofibrous scaffolds were synthesized by electrospinning for tissue engineering. Morphological characterization showed highly aligned nanofibrous morphology with nearly uniform diameter less than 200 nm and porosity reaches to 73%. The FTIR results showed no changes 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 scanning calorimetry (DSC). The results of thermal analysis confirmed that the amorphous nature of PLGA with glass transition temperature of the electrospun sheet is lower than that of the raw PLGA due to high surface area. The results of dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) showed a strong dependence of the visco-elastic behavior of PLGA nanofibers in terms of the frequency and the temperature criteria as the storage modulus (G’) increases at the time the loss modulus (G”) decreases with frequency. In vitro degradation behaviors of PLGA nanofibrous scaffolds were systematically investigated up to twenty weeks in phosphate buffer saline solution at 37oC. The visco-elastic behavior of PLGA nanofibrous scaffolds were evaluated during in-vitro degradation. As degradation time increases, the PLGA scaffolds show more weight loss and reduction in the storage modulus. The value of storage modulus was less than the half of its initial values after 12 weeks. In a ward, the aligned nanofibrous scaffolds used in this study constitute a promising material for tissue engineering.