High-Throughput Production of Gelatin-Based Touch-Spun Nanofiber for Biomedical Applications

Nanofiber production techniques have become increasingly important due to their wide range of applications. However, the complex design of the setup and difficulty in scaling up to high production rate have limited the industrial applicability of some of the conventional fiber generation techniques such as electrospinning. Herein, the touch spinning method is scaled up for nanofiber production using a simple rotating drawing setup with polymers that are relevant for biomedical applications such as polyethylene oxide and gelatin. The process is amenable to use of benign solvent such as water and production of a wide variety of submicron-scale gelatin-based nanofibers at a high throughput (approximate to 2.45 g hr-1 with the single channel flow), which is an order of magnitude higher than those produced by other fiber generation methods is shown. The parametric study indicates that the fiber production process can be tuned at a desired rate without sacrificing the fiber quality by simply altering the number of drawing rods, the size of the rotating disk, and the number of solution flow supply channels. The utility of this technique for different biomedical applications such as cell culture and air filtration applications is also demonstrated. A novel collectorless touch spinning technique capable of large-scale aligned nanofiber production has been developed. Using this approach, production of gelatin and composite nanofibers at high production rate and using green solvents is demonstrated. The obtained nanofiber mats have been successfully utilized in various biomedical applications such as air filtration and as cell culture substrates.image (c) 2024 WILEY-VCH GmbH