Marziyeh Ranjbar-Mohammadi

Electrospinning is a rather new method in which materials in solution or melt are formed into nano- and micro-sized continuous fibers. The construction of electrospun nanofibrous structures has attracted a great deal of interest in recent years, since they exhibit improved performance in tissue engineering scaffolds. In this paper graphene loaded nanofibrous scaffolds were fabricated via electrospinning solution from gelatin and poly (ε-caprolactone) polymers. RSM methodology based on fourvariables (PCL/gelatin blend ratio, applied voltage, solution feed rate, and graphene concentration) with three-levels was used for modeling the average diameter of nanofibers and investigating the effect of these different parameters on the morphology of nanofibers. In RSM method, the individual and interaction effects between the parameters on the average diameter of nanofibers were determined using Box-Benkhen design (BBD). Our results showed that, with increasing the PCL/gelatin ratio the diameter of nanofibers increased, whereas increasing graphene concentration decreased the diameter of nanofibers up to an optimum content.