Nanofiber
membranes have attracted substantial interests in recent years due to
their large surface area, high surface to volume ratio, and porosity.
These advantages have expanded their applications to sensors,
filtration, catalysis, textiles and drug delivery. Given that their
structural geometries are analogous with native extracellular matrix
existing in human body, they have been employed in biomedical
applications. However, electrospinning process, which is widely used for
the fabrication of nanofibers, has only produced a nanofiber membrane
adhered to a metal surface which limited the use of permeable property
of the membrane in various fields. This is because fabricated nanofibers
were collected on a metal surface, and interwoven into a membrane on
the surface.
The
team introduced an electrolyte collector in the electrospinning process
instead of a metal collector. The fluidic nature of the electrolyte
collector enabled a micro-scale patterned free-standing nanofiber
membrane integrated with desired substrates from a two-dimensional flat
surface to three-dimensional curved geometry. They also confirmed the
structural integrity and performance of the free-standing nanofiber
membrane integrated with a microfluidic device, which will have a broad
impact in many areas including biosensors, chemical synthesis, and
clinical diagnostics. The fabricated free-standing nanofiber membrane
can also show great potential in the fields of tissue scaffolds and
organ-on-a-chip, given that free-standing fibrous membranes (e.g.
basement membrane) play a critical role in natural systems such as
human-organs.
Prof. Kim emphasized “This
research brought forward the fabrication of free-standing nanofiber
membrane on a curved surface without complicated steps, and expected to
stimulate extensive progress in the field of tissue-engineering and
bio-medical applications”.
This
research was supported by the National Research Foundation of Korea
(NRF) grant funded by the Korea government (MSIP) (No.
2014R1A2A1A01006527 and 2011-0030075), and by the convergence technology
development program for Bionic Arm through the National Research
Foundation of Korea(NRF) funded by the Ministry of Science, ICT &
Future Planning (No. 2014M3C1B2048632).