Titanium Dioxide Functionalized Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes, and Silver Nanoparticles Reinforced Polyurethane Nanofibers As a Novel Scaffold for Tissue Engineering Applications

Polyurethane is a synthetic polymer that can be fabricated into nanofibers to mimic extracellular matrix properties facilitating cell attachment and growth on the fibrous network. However, enhanced hydrophilicity and high mechanical properties may improve their use in tissue engineering, suggesting additional modifications are needed. The current work presents the fabrication of polyurethane-based bone regenerative nanofibers reinforced with TiO2-MWCNT composites and harboring Ag NPs for bacte-rial inhibition. The fibers possessed smooth morphology with an average size ranging from 800 to 1200 nm. Techniques like SEM, FTIR, XPS, XRD, EDAX, and UV-vis spectroscopy confirmed the presence of nanofiber components like TiO2-MWCNT and Ag NPs. The Ag NPs' release in PBS was more than 80% over 48 h. The tensile strength and elastic modulus of the nanofibers ranged from 2.1 to 7.1 MPa and 0.53 to 2.39 MPa, respectively. The contact angle demonstrated significant improvement in the hydrophilicity of the nanofibers. These Ag-impregnated fibers controlled bacterial growth, as demon-strated by the disk diffusion and turbidity assays against E. coli and S. aureus. The MTT test revealed excel-lent biocompatibility against HEK 293 cells. Finally, compared to the pristine nanofibers, cell growth and attachment are considerably high in the case of modified nanofibers. (c) 2023 The Korean Society of Industrial and Engineering Chemistry. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.