LAUSR

Abstract Carbon-based nanomaterials (CBNs) such as graphene oxide (GO, planar shape-2D), reduced graphene (rGR, planar shape-2D), carbon nanotube (CNT, tubular shape -1D) and fullerene (C60, sphere shape-0D) can offer higher mechanical strength and biocompatibility to scaffold employed in wound healing applications. It is important to understand the role of dimensional aspects of CBNs on the scaffold properties. To contribute to this understanding, this paper reports the effect of dimensional aspects of Triethoxysilane poly (amidoamine) dendrimer generation 3 (TES-PAMAM-G3 or G3) functionalized carbon nanomaterials were introduced in the self-assembly processes of collagen. The prepared CBNs-TES-PAMAM-G3 -collagen scaffolds were characterized through various spectroscopic techniques and used in-vivo wound healing application. Among the CBNs-TES-PAMAM-G3 -collagen scaffolds investigated, a CNT-TES-PAMAM-G3-collagen scaffold showed enhanced mechanical properties (46 times compared to pure collagen), better cell viability and accelerate wound healing process than other scaffolds. Such enhanced mechanical properties for CNT-TES-PAMAM-G3-collagen scaffold can be attributed to the inherent strength and possibilities of alignment of the nanostructure along the linear axis of the collagen through the use of 1D nanotube. These results suggested that the CNT-TES-PAMAM-G3-collagen scaffolds are promising materials for tissue engineering and wound healing application.