Development and characterization of PVA based hydrogel for cartilage tissue scaffold

This study investigates the characteristics of knee cartilage hydrogel of Poly(vinyl)alcohol (PVA) based scaffolds which fabricated with different proportion of gelatin and Polycaprolactone (PCL) using swelling test, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and tensile test. Two different hydrogels were fabricated which are Polyvinylalcohol PVA/gel and PVA/PCL. For each type of hydrogel, four samples with different proportion were produced. For the PVA/gel hydrogel, amount of gelatin was increased in each sample (2.5g, 3.0g, 3.5g, and 4.0g). It was also done to PVA/PCL sample where amount of PCL was increased in each sample. Amount of PVA was kept constant. Swelling test was done by drying the samples and immersing them in distilled water for 24hours. SEM was used to observe the morphological characteristics of the samples. Lastly, the strength of the samples were collected directly from the graph and raw data obtained by using Universal Testing Instron machine. Swelling test has shown the increasing data for both PVA/gel and PVA/PCL of increasing amount while the combination of PVA/gel has shown greatest tensile strength compared to PVA/PCL whereas SEM examination has shown the contribution of porogen for porosity of hydrogel scaffolds.