Deposition of polyvinyl alcohol on prefabricated scaffold of polylactic acid fibers-aluminum by electrospinning and dip coating, and comparative investigation of their biodegradable as well as electrochemical behaviors

Electrospinning is an advanced process to produce polymer fibres. A critical application of these porous fibres is in biomedical applications as scaffolds for their excellent biodegradability. This work includes the fabrication and testing of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) coated polylactic acid (PLA) fibres-aluminium (Al) scaffolds. Three samples have been fabricated and tested in total: sample 1, porous scaffold of polylactic acid fibers-aluminum (APLF); sample 2; PVA fibers coated APLF prepared by electrospinning (APLFPVF); and sample 3, bulk PVA coated APLF prepared by dip coating (APLFPVD). The fabricated samples are inspected by field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), which confirms that the samples have been successfully fabricated. The biodegradable behaviour of these samples is tested by water contact angle (WCA) measurements and surface roughness (SR) testing. In contrast, the electrochemical behaviour has been checked in 0.5MNaCl by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and Tafel polarization curves (TPC). The samples can be ranked based on their biodegradable behavior results as follows: APLFPVF > APLFPVD > APLF. The result for electrochemical behaviors supports the above statement. It is recommended that coating both PVA fibers and bulk PVA on Cu enhances its biodegradability; however, PVA fibers are more effective in this regard.