Investigation of Effects of Electrospinning Parameters on Transcription Quality of Nanofibrous Bifurcated-Tubular Scaffold

A parametric sensitivity study to improve the transcription quality of the nanofibrous bifurcated-tubular scaffold is performed to resolve the limited transcription quality issue in fabricating the scaffold based on hydrogel-assisted electrospinning (GelES). To characterize the transcription quality of the fabricated 3D nanofibrous bifurcated-tubular scaffold structure, two different measures of a coverage ratio (C-R) and a corner profile fidelity (F-C) are evaluated. Results of sensitivity analysis on C-R, in which the design of experiments is based on the Taguchi method, revealed that the C-R increases with decreasing tip-to-collector distance (TCD) and polycaprolactone concentration (C-PCL). Moreover, among the processing parameters, namely, TCD, C-PCL, and applied voltage (V-A), the TCD is found to be the dominantly affecting processing parameter. Parametric study results show that F-C increases with the branching angle (theta(B)). By combining the optimal processing condition and a maximum theta(B) of 120 degrees, a leakage-free 3D nanofibrous bifurcated-tubular scaffold with a sharp carina is fabricated by the GelES.