Design and fabrication of highly aligned poly(l-lactide-co-ε-caprolactone) nanofiber yarns and braided textiles

Abstract

An approach that combines a modified electrospinning method with thermal stretching post-treatment is designed to fabricate poly(l-lactide-co-ε-caprolactone) (PLCL) electrospun nanofiber yarns (ENYs). The nanofiber diameter in the PLCL ENYs is found to present an increasing trend with the increasing of polymeric concentration. When the PLCL concentration reaches 13% (w/v), the as-generated ENYs show bead-free and uniform nanofibrous structure. Then, a thermally stretching technique is applied to process the primarily-obtained PLCL ENYs. When the stretching temperature is set as 60 °C, the thermally-stretched PLCL ENYs present superior fiber orientation and notably enhanced crystallinity, thus resulting in dramatically increased mechanical properties. Finally, the thermally stretched PLCL ENYs are further processed into braided fabrics, and their mechanical properties are found to possess an obviously increased trend with the increasing of ENY numbers, demonstrating the adjustment feasibility of the mechanical properties of ENY-based textiles by controlling the ENY numbers. Importantly, the in vitro cell studies demonstrate that the ENY-based braided textiles significantly support the adhesion and proliferation of human dermal fibroblasts (HDFs). In all, the present study provides an easily-handling strategy to fabricate high performance PLCL ENYs, which shows promising future for the generation of advanced biomedical textiles.