Porous and fibrous artificial extracellular matrices (ECM) called scaffolds are considered to be promising avenues of research in the field of biomedical engineering, including tissue fabrication through cell culture. The current work deals with the fabrication of new matrix-type scaffolds through electrospinning, in order to support future three-dimensional tissue formation. The selected material for the fabrication of these scaffolds was a supramolecular polymer (SP) that is based on ureiodypyrimidone hydrogen bonding units (UPy). More precisely, pure SP and modified electrospun scaffolds with (a) graphene nanoplatelets (GNPs), (b) hydroxyapatite (HA), and (c) a mixture of both were fabricated for the needs of the current study. The aim of this work is to engineer and to characterize SP electrospun scaffolds (with and without fillers) and study whether the introduction of the fillers improve the physical and mechanical properties of them. The obtained results indicate that doping the SP scaffolds with GNPs led to improved apparent mechanical properties while HA seems to slightly deteriorate them. For all cases, doping provided thinner fibers with a more hydrophilic surface. Taking together, these types of SP scaffolds can be further studied as potential candidate for cell culture.
Keywords: GNPs; cell culture; electrospinning; hydrogen bonds; hydroxyapatite; scaffolds; supramolecular polymers; tissue engineering.