Open Access Conference Proceedings

Polyvinylidenefluoride (PVDF) is a biocompatible, nondegradable material commonly used in medicine as a surgical suture. However, the use of PVDF in the field of tissue engineering has more significant potential. One is the possibility of using nanofibrous PVDF layers for applications such as hernia meshes, glaucoma drainage implants, or nondegradable vascular grafts and verifying many properties, such as sterilization, precedes using such biomaterial in clinical practice. An inappropriately chosen method tends to disrupt the fibrous structure or affect the behavior of cells in contact with the material. Current literature does not provide a comparison of different sterilization methods on PVDF. The study is devoted to the influence of the most commonly used sterilization and disinfection methods on the nanofibrous PVDF layer prepared by the needleless electrospinning technique. Changes in fiber morphology, molecular weight, macroscopic changes, and behavior of cells on the material surface were monitored. It was discovered that the chosen methods do not affect fiber morphology or changes in molecular weight. However, the behavior of the cells on the materials sterilized by plasma was different.

Keywords: Polyvinylidenefluoride, sterilization, nanofibers, electrospinning

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