Unraveling hierarchically ordered melt electro-written tissue engineering scaffolds: Morphological and mechanical insights

Addressing critical tissue defects treatment remains a pressing challenge in medicine and bioengineering. Tissue engineering (TE) scaffolds, characterized by porous architectures suitable to cell growth, is a pivotal solution. Recent advances in additive techniques have revolutionized scaffold fabrication, enabling precise control over complex porous structures. This study conducts a comprehensive analysis of hierarchically ordered melt electrospun written (MEW) TE scaffolds, elucidating the relationships between fabrication parameters and their morphological and mechanical properties. Leveraging the phenomenon of melt jet deposit buckling, characteristic hierarchically ordered porous architectures were attained. The study explores the fabrication potential of hierarchically ordered porous MEW architectures across varied voltages, feed rates, and needle sizes. Morphometric parameters, including percent porosity, density of fiber intersections, and fiber diameter, were identified. It was revealed that for feed rates exceeding 20 mm/s, resultant fiber diameters were unaffected by voltage. However, increasing voltage leads to noticeable reduction of mesh stiffness due to the coiled fibers presence. Exceptions occur at the feed rate of 20 mm/s and for needle G24, where stiffness surpasses those of regular primary pattern, which could be attributed to increased number of fiber interconnections. [Display omitted] •Revealed effect of fabrication parameters on MEW meshes morphology and mechanics.•Presence of coils and fiber waving leads to reduction in the MEW mesh stiffness.•Increase in coil density over a critical level, makes the MEW mesh stiffer.•For feed rates greater than 20 mm/s the fiber diameter is voltage-independent.