Fabrication of conducting electrospun nanofibers scaffold for three-dimensional cells culture.

Electrospinning is a versatile method to fabricate nanofibers of a range of polymeric and composite materials suitable as scaffolds for tissue engineering applications. In this study, we report the fabrication and characterization of polyaniline-carbon nanotube/poly(N-isopropyl acrylamide-co-methacrylic acid) (PANI-CNT/PNIPAm-co-MAA) composite nanofibers and PNIPAm-co-MAA nanofibers suitable as a three-dimensional (3D) conducting smart tissue scaffold using electrospinning. The chemical structure of the resulting nanofibers was characterized with FTIR and ¹H NMR spectroscopy. The surface morphology and average diameter of the nanofibers were observed by SEM. Cellular response of the nanofibers was studied with mice L929 fibroblasts. Cell viability was checked on 7 th day of cell culture by double staining the cells with calcein-AM and PI dye. PANI-CNT/PNIPAm-co-MAA composite nanofibers were shown the highest cell growth and cell viability as compared to PNIPAm-co-MAA nanofibers. Cell viability in the composite nanofibers was obtained in order of 98% that indicates the composite nanofibers provide a better environment as a 3D scaffold for the cell proliferation and attachment suitable for tissue engineering applications.