Preparation and characterization of nylon-6/gelatin composite nanofibers via electrospinning for biomedical applications

Easy fabrication, porosity, good mechanical properties, and composition controllable of the electrospun nanofiber mat make this material a promising candidate for wound dressing applications. In the present study, nylon6/gelatin electrospun nanofiber mats are introduced as novel wound dressing materials. The introduced mats were synthesized by electrospinning of nylon6 and gelatin mixtures, three mats containing different gelatin content were prepared; 10, 20 and 30 wt%. Interestingly, addition of the gelatin did not affect the mechanical properties of the nylon 6, moreover the mat containing 10 wt% gelatin revealed higher mechanical properties due to formation of spider-net like structure from very thin nanofibers (∼10 nm diameter) bonding the main nanofibers. Biologically study indicates that gelatin incorporation strongly enhances the bioactivity performance as increasing the gelatin content linearly increases the MC3T3-E1 cell attachment. Overall, the obtained results recommend exploiting the introduced mats as wound dressing material. © 2013 The Korean Fiber Society and Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.