TY - JOUR
T1 - The Synergy of Electrospinning and Imprinting for Faithful Replication of Fiber Structures
AU - Sahin, Gozde
AU - Vrij, Erik
AU - Grant, Rhiannon
AU - Giselbrecht, Stefan
N1 - Funding Information:
R.G. and S.G. contributed equally to this work. The authors acknowledge Francis Morgan (MERLN, Maastricht University) for his help with rheological measurement of PDMS.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 The Authors. Advanced Materials Technologies published by Wiley-VCH GmbH.
PY - 2023/8/25
Y1 - 2023/8/25
N2 - Electrospinning is a powerful method to fabricate structures resembling the fibrous texture of the native extracellular matrix. However, the random fiber deposition of the process hinders a faithful reproduction of the fiber mesh morphology on multiple samples, which raises difficulties in experimental designs to systematically test and assess cell response in vitro. A multi-replication process to precisely reproduce the fiber morphology on different cell culture substrates is developed. The process involves a decoupling of the fiber structure, material, and porosity by combining the key advantages of electrospinning and imprinting. With this, fiber patterns having a diameter between 0.4 and 2.8 µm are replicated on polycarbonate, polystyrene, poly(methyl methacrylate), and cyclic olefin copolymer films. Identical fiber morphology is, then, obtained on porous films having a pore diameter between 2 and 12 µm. Having full control over these parameters allows the multireplication process to engineer well-characterized cell microenvironments, which can potentially be used to further investigate complex cell–material interactions.
AB - Electrospinning is a powerful method to fabricate structures resembling the fibrous texture of the native extracellular matrix. However, the random fiber deposition of the process hinders a faithful reproduction of the fiber mesh morphology on multiple samples, which raises difficulties in experimental designs to systematically test and assess cell response in vitro. A multi-replication process to precisely reproduce the fiber morphology on different cell culture substrates is developed. The process involves a decoupling of the fiber structure, material, and porosity by combining the key advantages of electrospinning and imprinting. With this, fiber patterns having a diameter between 0.4 and 2.8 µm are replicated on polycarbonate, polystyrene, poly(methyl methacrylate), and cyclic olefin copolymer films. Identical fiber morphology is, then, obtained on porous films having a pore diameter between 2 and 12 µm. Having full control over these parameters allows the multireplication process to engineer well-characterized cell microenvironments, which can potentially be used to further investigate complex cell–material interactions.
KW - cell microenvironments
KW - electrospinning
KW - imprinting
KW - nanotechnology
UR - https://www.scopus.com/pages/publications/85163885191
U2 - 10.1002/admt.202300344
DO - 10.1002/admt.202300344
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85163885191
SN - 2365-709X
VL - 8
JO - Advanced Materials Technologies
JF - Advanced Materials Technologies
IS - 16
M1 - 2300344
ER -