EXPERIMENTAL AND NUMERICAL ANALYSES ON THE POLY(LACTIDE-CO-GLYCOLIDE) HOLLOW FIBER MEMBRANES

摘要

The hollow fiber membranes (HFMs) were widely used as tissue engineering scaffold. The efficacy of the HFMs were affected by the porosity of the HFMs. In this study, the HFMs were prepared with dry-jet wet spinning method. In order to improve the performance of the HFMs, different spinning parameters were applied to systematically investigating the effects of the fabrication conditions on the porosity of the HFMs. A 1-D diffusion model was set to numerically study the volume fraction distribution along the wall thickness. The porosity of the HFMs show a significant decrease in the porosity as the dope concentration increases. The morphology analyses showed that a higher dope concentration leads to a denser porous structure which result in a lower porosity. The results were discussed based on the phase inversion process and the 1-D model was built to numerically analyze the polymer volume fraction distribution in the HFMs cross section. This study can help to better understand the effects of the different fabrication conditions on the morphology of the HFMs.