Electrospinning process: Versatile preparation method for biodegradable and natural polymers and biocomposite systems applied in tissue engineering and drug delivery

Over the past two decades, the electrospinning process has shown a great potential in various applications, such as membrane filtration, catalytic processes, fibrous-sensor applications, drug delivery and tissue engineering, due to ability of facile producing high surface-to-volume fibrous structure. The most appealing electrospinning characteristic has shown to be the mimicking nano-scale fibrous topography of extracellular matrix (ECM) in tissue engineering field. The wide range of electrospinnable synthetic biodegradable and natural polymers offers fabrication of fibrous nano-structures with specific biological responses and mechanical properties. Conducting different processing parameters (needle geometry, tip-to- collector distance, electric field strength, collector composition and geometry) allows the altering of fiber size, density, alignment and overall morphology. So far, electrospinning process has shown limitless application in tissue engineering and drug delivery. The following review has been focused on studies of electrospinning process as the most promising fabrication technique for tissue engineering and drug delivery applications. (C) 2014 Elsevier B. V. All rights reserved.