Bio-Mechanical Applications of Electrospun Polycaprolactone (PCL) Nanofiber

Due to its low cost, biocompatibility and slow bioresorption, poly-epsilon-caprolactone (PCL) continues to be a suitable material for select biomedical engineering applications. In this study, we have concentrated on improving the efficiency of the titanium, bone cement and polymeric membrane by modify each of the materials surface characteristics. The first part of the study evaluated both experimentally and numerically the effect of surface modification on a titanium implant to the load transfer characteristics from implant to bone for examining stress shielding parameters. This study measured the effect of micron grooves on titanium to the mechanical stability of titanium using a rabbit model. This study also developed a finite element model based on the in vivo test model to examine the stress shielding parameters. The results showed that the mean values of fracture strength were significantly higher for grooved titanium samples compared to the samples without any groove and unequal load sharing due to micro-grooving causes an increase in stiffness of the adjacent bone to the implant.;The second part of the study is based on the hypothesis that the PCL nanofiber membrane (NFM) on PMMA will increase biocompatibility without influencing its mechanical properties. This study prepared PMMA samples without and with the PCL NFM coating, which were named the control and NFM coated samples. This study determined the effects on the surface topography of each group of PMMA. This study found that the NFM coating on PMMA significantly improved the surface roughness and cytocompatibility properties of PMMA (p < 0.05). Therefore, the developed PCL NFM coating technique on PMMA has potential in clinical applications.;The third part of the study evaluated the immobilization of metal oxide (MO) nanoparticles (NPs) for a gas sensor research. The goal of this project was to immobilize three different metal oxide (MO) nanoparticles (NPs) (MgO, TiO2, ZnO) with PCL NFM to create each MO-PCL NFM. The scanning electron microscopy analysis of the fabricated membranes confirmed that MO NPs reached the collector along with the polymer solution during the electrospinning process.