Polycaprolactone (pcl) Nonwoven Mats for Use as Tissue Engineering Scaffolds Generate by Electrospinning Process

Electrospinning or electrostatic fiber spinning is an emerging technology that requires electric fields for the formation of non-woven materials that can be used in clothing, highperformance filters, separation membranes, scaffolds in tissue engineering, reinforcement in composite materials, templates for the preparation of functional nanotubes, and many others applications [1]. Polycaprolactone, a bioresorbable polymer, was electrospun into nanofibers in the form of nonwoven scaffold structures for tissue engineering. Such tissue-engineered structures will be valuable in the repair and replacement of diseased liver tissue. In this paper, preliminary results are presented using the electrospinning technique as a new nano-fibers process. We investigated some of the variables affecting the behavior of the electrical fluid jet during the electrospinning process (fluid properties and operating parameters). By controlling the spinning parameters, fibers of polymers as small 140 500 nm size diameters can be obtained using this technique. One of the objectives of this research is to construct the operating diagrams or phase diagrams that can give a better understanding of the variables affecting the behavior of the electrified fluid jet during electrospinning process. These diagrams can link the processing conditions (operating parameters) and polymer fluid properties to the structure and properties of the final product, electrospun nanofibers, to use this information to correlate yarns orientation by electrospinning, and to increase the productivity of the alternative process so that it may be scale up to a large production scale. The ultimate goal of this research will be supercritical carbon dioxide assisted electrospinning process. A modified Suprex PrepMaster supercritical fluid extractor will be used to run the elecstrospinning experiments [2].