Production of Conductive Biocompatible Nanofibrous Substrate made of PLGA/PCL/PANI

Due to the high utilization of conductive materials as well as nanofibrous substrates in various engineering and sciences such as tissue engineering, biosensors, etc., in this study production of conductive biocompatible nanofibrous substrates using electrospinning system was studied. For this purpose, the combination of two biocompatible polymers: polycaprolactone (PCL) and poly(lactic-co-glycolic acid) (PLGA) was used as a main material and polyaniline as a conductive polymer (PANI) to create conductivity in the substrates. After determining the properties of electrospun substrates and optimization of process factors, 4 types of nanofibrous substrate with 4 level of conductive polymer (0%, 1%, 10% & 18%) were prepared.
Investigating the physical properties of substrates show that with increasing the amount of PANI, hydrophilicity of the substrates as well as the diameter of the fibers decreased significantly. Furthermore, the conductivity of samples gradually increased from 0.17 to 0.32 S/cm*10-4 by elevating the PANI concentration.