A review of electrospinning manipulation techniques to direct fiber deposition and maximize pore size

Electrospinning has been widely accepted for several decades by the tissue engineering and regenerative medicine community as a technique for nanofiber production. Owing to the inherent flexibility of the electrospinning process, a number of techniques can be easily implemented to control fiber deposition (i.e. electric/ magnetic field manipulation, use of alternating current, or air-based fiber focusing) and/or porosity (i.e. air impedance, sacrificial porogen/sacrificial fiber incorporation, cryo-electrospinning, or alternative techniques). The purpose of this review is to highlight some of the recent work using these techniques to create electrospun scaffolds appropriate for mimicking the structure of the native extracellular matrix, and to enhance the applicability of advanced electrospinning techniques in the field of tissue engineering.