KCS

Conductive polymers based hydrogel have gained immense interest due to its wide range of applications in tissue engineering and biomedical applications, including an extracellular matrix for tissue growth and regeneration, electrode for patient monitoring and electrotherapy, or as biosensors, and implantable bioelectronics. Owing to three-dimensional (3-D) porous structure, hydrophilic characteristics, and tunable chemical and physical properties, electroconductive hydrogel mimics the extracellular matrix in tissues and considered as a good matrix for cell growth, proliferation, and migration. Proceeding towards fabrication, electroconductive hydrogels are often dealing with low biocompatibility, high cytotoxicity, injectability, and adhesiveness. Herein, the electroconductive fibrillar hydrogel was prepared from chemically crosslinked electrospun nanofiber-based on polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and with different poly(3, 4-ethylenedioxythiophene) polystyrene sulfonate (PEDOT: PSS) ratio. Physical, electrochemical, mechanical properties and biocompatibility were investigated to explore the impact of different amount of PEDOT: PSS loading. Chemical crosslinking between the hydroxyl group of PVA and sulfonic acid of PSS was confirmed by FTIR and swelling ratio. Also, the excess PSS to be considered as cytotoxic were removed during post-treatment, and confirmed by UV-Visible measurement. In addition, the 3-D neuronal culture of hippocampal neuronal cells on electroconductive fibrillar hydrogel with varying PEDOT: PSS loading showed the high viability and migration until 06 division. These results confer the feasibility of this scaffold to be used as extracellular matrix for neuronal tissue regeneration.