Enhancing the efficacy of PVA/PVP/chitosan/ceramics electrospun scaffolds through carbon quantum dots

Over the centuries, bone defects were treated effectively with scaffolds that are fabricated using metals, ceramics and polymer composites. Scaffolds fabricated via electrospinning provide porous, biodegradable structure with certain mechanical properties. Herein we have incorporated carbon quantum dots to the PVA/PVP/chitosan/ceramics (calcium silicate (CS)/zinc silicate (ZS)) matrix and electrospun the polymer blend. Following the assessment of the scaffolds, it was observed that the addition of carbon dots imparted optical properties to the scaffold and the scaffolds were observed to be bioactive by third day when it was treated with simulated body fluid which was further confirmed using XRD analysis. When the concentration of quantum dots increased from 0.2 to 1 %, there was a 47 % decrease in the fiber diameter for the CS incorporated scaffolds and for the ZS incorporated scaffolds, it was observed to be 43 %. This decrease in the fiber diameter elevated to swelling properties of the scaffold to ∼50 %. At higher rate of carbon quantum dots, CS incorporated scaffolds showed 82 % of biodegradation and ZS incorporated scaffolds had 74 % biodegradation after 28 days. The scaffolds maintained >70 % cell viability even after 48 h which proved the scaffolds to be biocompatible.