Structural, thermal, optical properties and cytotoxicity of PMMA/ZnO fibers and films: Potential application in tissue engineering

Abstract Films and fibers of PMMA/ZnO nanocomposites (100/0, 99/01, 97/03, 95/05, 90/10, and 85/15 wt.%) were produced by casting and electrospinning, respectively. Their structural, thermal, and optical properties were investigated by XRD, SEM, TGA, PAS, and PL. The incorporation of ZnO NPs reduced the diameter of PMMA fibers and the presence of beads. The surfaces of the fibers exhibited greater hydrophobicity, compared to the films, with contact angles of around 120° and 94°, respectively. PMMA films containing ZnO exhibited higher thermal stability than the pure polymer, while the corresponding fibers did not show any changes in thermal stability. The dispersion of the ZnO NPs at the surface and in the bulk of the nanocomposites appeared to be relatively homogeneous. ZnO improved the optical properties of the PMMA, with an intense absorption band near 370 nm observed for all the nanocomposites, which also exhibited luminescence with emission in the near-UV region, both attributed to ZnO. Biological tests demonstrated that fibers and films with up to 1% of ZnO exhibited good performance in the proliferation of fibroblast cells, indicating their potential for applications in tissue engineering. The fibers provided higher cell viability than the films, presumably due to their greater surface area and/or more suitable surface morphology. Nanocomposites with 15% ZnO inhibited cell proliferation, due to the cytotoxicity of the ZnO NPs. Although several applications of PMMA have been suggested by biomedical researchers, until now there have been no reports on the specific uses of fibers and films of PMMA/ZnO nanocomposites as scaffolds for fibroblast cell proliferation.