• radially aligned fibres
• electrospinning
• circularly aligned fibres
• scaffold
• tissue engineering

Tympanic membrane (TM) perforations represent a widespread clinical problem, with different surgical procedures involved for the treatments of chronic perforations. Graft materials and scaffolds are used as patches but, at present time, none of them include the reproduction of the unique arrangement of the eardrum collagen fibres, consisting of a radial layer and a circular one. The aim of this work is to design and produce a scaffold able to reproduce, at a sub-micrometric scale, this fibrous arrangement. The desired structures were reached via electrospinning of Poly(ethylene oxide terephthalate)-co-poly(butylene terephthalate) multi-block copolymer solution on a new type of collector, developed for our necessities with the aid of finite element analysis of the electric field. The main anatomical features of the human eardrum, such as shape, size and thickness, were achieved in the produced scaffolds. The radial fibre layer was accurately reproduced and the effect of the main processing parameters on the fibre diameters and arrangement were studied. Regarding the circular layer, a partial alignment was obtained and some strategies to improve the deposition precision were identified, which will be tested in the next future. The results of this study pave the way to design a final version of the collector, able to produce both layers in the scaffold in a precise and scalable manner.