In this work, the in vitro degradation behavior of nanofibers was investigated in phosphate buffer solution (PBS) and simulated body fluid (SBF) to study their degradation behavior, as well as their bioactivity. The degradation was studied at different immersion times in order to evaluate how the presence of Mg-based nanoparticles can affect the degradation in terms of morphology, crystallinity, degradation rate and pH changes, and finally to evaluate the bioactivity of PCL-based electrospun nanofibers. We found that the degradation of the materials takes more than 3 months; however, the presence of nanoparticles seems to have an accelerating effect on the degradation of the electrospun nanofibers based on PCL. In fact, a reduction in diameter of almost 50% was observed with the highest content of both types of nanoparticles and an increase in crystallinity after 296 days of immersion in PBS. Moreover, the carbonyl index was calculated from an FTIR analysis, and a reduction of 20-30% was observed due to the degradation effect. Additionally, the bioactivity of PCL-based electrospun nanofibers was studied and the formation of crystals on the nanofibers surface was detected, except for neat electrospun PCL related to the formation of NaCl and apatites, depending on the amount and type of nanoparticles. The presence of apatites was confirmed by an XRD analysis and FT-IR analysis observing the characteristic peaks; furthermore, the EDX analysis demonstrated the formation of apatites than can be reconducted to the presence of HA when 20 wt% of nanoparticles is added to the PCL electrospun fibers.
Keywords: Mg-based nanoparticles; PCL; biocomposites; biodegradable polymers; electrospinning.