Melt electrospinning of polycaprolactone and its blends with poly(ethylene glycol)

Melt electrospinning is one aspect of electrospinning with relatively little published literature, although the technique avoids solvent accumulation and/or toxicity which is favoured in certain applications In the study reported, we melt-electrospun blends of poly(epsilon-caprolactone) (PCL) and an amphiphilic diblock copolymer consisting of poly(ethylene glycol) and PCL segments (PEG-block PCL) A custom-made electrospinning apparatus was built and various combinations of instrument parameters such as voltage and polymer feeding rate were investigated Pure PEG-block-PCL copolymer melt electrospinning did not result in consistent and uniform fibres due to the low molecular weight, while blends of PCL and PEG-block-PCL, for some parameter combinations and certain weight ratios of the two components, were able to produce continuous fibres significantly thinner (average diameter of ca 2 mu m) compared to pure PCL The PCL fibres obtained had average diameters ranging from 6 to 33 mu m and meshes were uniform for the lowest voltage employed while mesh uniformity decreased when the voltage was increased This approach shows that PCL and blends of PEG block-PCL and PCL can be readily processed by melt electrospinning to obtain fibrous meshes with varied average diameters and morphologies that are of interest for tissue engineering purpose