Nanofibers of polycaprolactone containing hydroxyapatite doped with aluminum/vanadate ions for wound healing applications

Abstract

An electrospinning technique was utilized to fabricate a nanofibrous scaffold based on polycaprolactone (PCL) containing co-doped hydroxyapatite (HAP). HAP was modified with different content levels of aluminum/vanadate (Al/V) ions. The final compositions were formulated as xAl/V-HAP@PCL, where x refers to the aluminum concentration. Their compositional, microstructural, morphological, and mechanical behaviors were investigated using X-ray diffraction (XRD), transmission electron microscopy (TEM), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and tensile tests. The cell viability was investigated using the human fibroblast cell line, and this changed from 94.5% to 101.3% as the Al content increased. The contact angle decreased from 100° to 86° with variation of the Al content. The SEM and TEM micrographs exhibit the formation of porous non-oriented fibers with diameters between 40 and 870 nm and particles between 50 and 870 nm in size. XRD showed a variation in crystallinity from 24% to 24.7% for the fibers and from 57.7% to 38.3% for the nanopowder. The tensile tests showed an increase in toughness from 2.34 ± 0.7 to 2.52 ± 0.8 MJ m⁻³. SEM micrographs of cells revealed the proliferation process inside and on the surface of the fibers. These results could be an indicator of a material that can be used for biomedical wound healing applications.