Evaluation of the factors influencing the resultant diameter of the electrospun gelatin/sodium alginate nanofibers via Box-Behnken design

This article presented a study on the effects of solution properties (i.e., gelatin concentration, alginate concentration, content of alginate solution in the blend solution, and content of acetic acid in the solvent of gelatin solution) on the average diameter of electrospun gelatin/sodium alginate nanofibers, as well as its standard deviation. For this purpose, blend solutions of two natural polymers (gelatin and sodium alginate) were prepared both in the absence and presence of ethanol. Response surface methodology based on a three-level, four-variable Box-Benkhen design was employed to define quadratic relationships between the responses and the solution properties. The individual and interactive effects of the solution properties were determined. Moreover, the adequacy of the models was verified by the validation experiments. Results showed that the average diameters of the resultant nanofibers were 68-166 nm and 90-155 nm in the absence and presence of ethanol, respectively. The experimental results were in good agreement with the predicted response values. Hence, this study provides an overview on the fabrication of gelatin/sodium alginate nanofibers with targeted diameter, which may have potential to be used in the field of tissue engineering. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.