Near-field melt electrospinning of poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) micro-line array for cell alignment study

Cell alignment is widely found in various tissues and organs in vivo, thus engineering of cell alignment is a significant issue in tissue engineering. Near-field melt electrospinning (NMES) is an emerging technique to produce polymer microfibers, which has been increasingly used to prepare scaffold; however, the effect of NMES micro-pattern on cell orientation guidance such as cell alignment has not been investigated systematically yet. In this study, poly(ε-caprolactone) (PCL) micro-line array was fabricated by NMES for cell alignment studies. Different from most previous reports, PCL micro-line array with improved fiber deposition accuracy and decreased fiber spacing (small to 10 μm) was achieved by regulating the applied voltage and nozzle-to-collector distance. Cell alignment was observed on PCL micro-line arrays and the alignment effect weakened with the increase of the space between micro-lines. By MTT analysis, cells cultured on NMES PCL micro-line arrays showed better viability than that on plain substrate without PCL, which was advantageous over conventional electrospun nanofibers. (paper)