Scaffold Design

At The Electrospinning Company we can design and manufacture electrospun scaffolds in a wide range of formats, morphologies, shapes and sizes. We can tailor a range of attributes to match your needs for cell growth and behaviour and fit with other materials or medical device components.

We can work with you to turn an idea or concept design into a Target Product Profile and Study Plan taking into account technical challenges, regulatory strategy and cost-of-goods implications.

Scaffold Parameters

  • Raw Material: synthetic and biological polymers. We can select polymers to tailor mechanical properties such as stiffness and elasticity as well as degradation rate.
  • Porosity: fibre diameter and pore size
  • Fibre orientation: random or aligned and combinations for optimised orientation and strength.
  • Scaffold thickness
  • Sheets or complex shapes

Electrospinning and Post-spinning Processing

We have these capabilities within our modular clean room facilities:

  • Electrospinning machines from three manufacturers as well as proprietary R&D equipment
  • Vacuum drying and removal of residual solvent
  • Thermal annealing
  • Solution dispensing
  • Die-cutting and laser machining
  • Solvent and sonic welding
  • Packaging including a blister pack line
  • Labelling
  • Medical Vacuum Sealer

We provide further services through our network of approved suppliers:

  • Sterilisation by gamma-irradiation, e-beam or ethylene oxide treatment
  • Bioburden and sterility studies
  • Plasma treatment
  • Mechanical testing
Microscaffold with A549 cells 4 days post-seeding and unseeded scaffold (SEM)
Fibre diameter distribution graph from Fibermetric software

Analysis and Quality Control

We will supply a Certificate of Analysis or Conformance with all samples

  • Fibre diameter and diameter distribution (Phenom SEM with fibermetric software)
  • Fibre alignment data (SEM)
  • Scaffold thickness (micrometer/SEM) and density
  • Mechanical properties (Tinius Olsen 5ST)
  • Residual solvent analysis (research or GLP grade)

(some analytical studies are out-sourced to approved suppliers)