Fabrication of nanocomposite mat through incorporating bioactive glass particles into gelatin/poly(ε-caprolactone) nanofibers by using Box-Behnken design.

The current research was conducted to propose a nanocomposite material, which could be suitable to be used as a scaffold for bone tissue engineering applications. For this purpose, nanocomposite fibers of gelatin, poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL), and bioactive glass were successfully fabricated via electrospinning process. In this context, response surface methodology based on a three-level, four-variable Box-Behnken design was adopted as an optimization tool to choose the most appropriate parameter settings to obtain the desired fiber diameter. The investigation, based on a second order polynomial model, focused on the analysis of the effect of both solution and processing parameters on the fiber diameter and its standard deviation. In optimum conditions (bioactive glass content of 7.5% (w/v), applied voltage of 25kV, tip-to-collector distance of 12.5cm, and flow rate of 1mL/h), the fiber diameter was found to be 584±337nm which was in good agreement with the predicted value by the developed models (523±290nm). Analytical tools such as scanning electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction analysis, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and differential thermal analyzer were used for further evaluation of the optimized nanocomposite mat. The overall results showed that nanocomposite scaffolds could be promising candidates for tissue engineering applications.

Evaluation of the factors influencing the resultant diameter of the electrospun gelatin/sodium alginate nanofibers via Box-Behnken design.

This article presented a study on the effects of solution properties (i.e., gelatin concentration, alginate concentration, content of alginate solution in the blend solution, and content of acetic acid in the solvent of gelatin solution) on the average diameter of electrospun gelatin/sodium alginate nanofibers, as well as its standard deviation. For this purpose, blend solutions of two natural polymers (gelatin and sodium alginate) were prepared both in the absence and presence of ethanol. Response surface methodology based on a three-level, four-variable Box-Benkhen design was employed to define quadratic relationships between the responses and the solution properties. The individual and interactive effects of the solution properties were determined. Moreover, the adequacy of the models was verified by the validation experiments. Results showed that the average diameters of the resultant nanofibers were 68-166 nm and 90-155 nm in the absence and presence of ethanol, respectively. The experimental results were in good agreement with the predicted response values. Hence, this study provides an overview on the fabrication of gelatin/sodium alginate nanofibers with targeted diameter, which may have potential to be used in the field of tissue engineering.