Carboxymethyl cellulose nanofibres impregnated with silver nanoparticles for tissue engineering applications

In this research, carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) nanofibres were synthesised and fabricated using the electrospinning method. The CMC/PVA (30:70) fibres with concentrations of 1.5 wt% and 11 wt% respectively were embedded with varying concentrations of AgNO3 (0.6 % - 2.0 %). The surface morphology of the CMC/PVA/AgNPs fibres observed under SEM revealed a uniform and smooth surface with an average diameter range of 114.86 - 126.90 nm. The ATR-FTIR results demonstrated that all samples exhibited intramolecular and intermolecular hydrogen bonds of the O-H group of CMC. All peaks showed shifts to the left as the amount of AgNPs were increased. A study on the cell-scaffold interaction was carried out by culturing human fibroblast (hFB) cells on the nanofibres to assess the growth, proliferation and morphologies of the cells. The SEM results show that better cell proliferation and attachment were shown on the CMC/PVA/AgNPs (2.0 %) scaffolds after 24 hours of culturing, thus proving the potential of this scaffold as a promising candidate for tissue engineering applications.