Fig. 1

Touch-spinning was used to fabricate highly aligned nanofiber scaffolds of different diameters. In touch-spinning, a platform spins at a defined and tunable rate, allowing for a needle/rod to (A) come into contact with a droplet of the polymer solution, (B, C) draw the droplet into a fiber mechanically, and (D) collect the fiber on a stationary center substrate (i.e., coverslip). Middle row: Representative SEM images of touch-spun, aligned nanofibers of diameters (E) 0.9 (F) 1.2 (G) 1.8 µm are shown. The scale bar represents 20 µm. (H) Fiber diameter as a function of spin rate. By increasing the spin rate of the rotating platform, fibers of smaller diameters were yielded. Significance was calculated using one-way ANOVA with Tukey as a post hoc test. Error bar: standard deviation. Bottom row: Fibers are highly aligned, with alignment distribution of (I) 0.9 (J) 1.2 (K) 1.8 µm fiber scaffolds. Three independent polymer solutions were used for fabrication and diameter measurement (N = 3). At least 50 individual fibers (n) were measured (0.9 µm: n = 61; 1.2 µm: n = 60; 1.8 µm: n = 54) for each population.