Directional fluid induced self-assembly of oriented bacterial cellulose nanofibers for potential biomimetic tissue engineering scaffolds

In this work, a novel fermentor which can generate directional fluid environment for the cultivation of bacterial cellulose (BC) was used to produce oriented BC (OBC) nanofibers. The as-prepared OBC was characterized by SEM, XRD, FT-IR, and mechanical testing. It is found that OBC nanofibers are well aligned under the action of directional fluid and large-sized OBC scaffolds can be produced. XRD and FT-IR analyses indicate that directional fluid does not affect the chemical structure while the crystallinity of OBC decreases as compared to BC produced under static cultivation conditions. Tensile testing reveals the anisotropy of the mechanical properties in two orthogonal directions due to the oriented fiber structure. It is expected that OBC may be applied as biomimetic scaffolds for guided directional tissue growth. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.