Open Access Conference Proceedings

The wet electrospinning method involves the use of a liquid instead of a solid or other type of collector for the collection of fabricated materials. This paper provides a description of an experimental laboratory wet electrospinning device, most of the various components of which were 3D printed by means of Fused Filament Fabrication (FFF) technology. The various morphologies of the biodegradable electrospun materials produced via the wet electrospinning technique are compared with those obtained via the classic needle electrospinning method employing SEM image analysis. The paper also provides a comparison with the structures and in-vitro viability of samples produced using the classic electrospinning approach and the wet electrospinning method with drying under both laboratory and freeze-drying conditions. The wet electrospinning freeze-drying method provides for the production of both high porosity and bulky materials. The in-vitro cell viability tests demonstrated that the wet electrospinning samples dried via the freeze-drying method evinced the highest rate of fibroblast proliferation. The novelty of the approach lies in its simplicity, the relatively low costs involved and the ease of the replication of the device for laboratory and low-quantity production purposes. Moreover, the various experiments conducted served both to prove the usefulness of the device and to determine that the resulting structure is suitable for cell growth, thus enabling the production of candidate materials for tissue engineering scaffolds.

Keywords: Wet electrospinning, scaffold, tissue engineering, 3D printer, cell viability

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