Summary
Thermo-responsive, degradable shape-memory polymers are of interest in biomedicine as actively moving scaffolds or switchable substrates. Most electrospun shape-memory scaffolds so far have used solid micro- or nanofibres, so this study asks whether scaffolds built from hollow microfibres can be produced from a degradable shape-memory copolyetheresterurethane (PDC) made of crystallizable oligo(p-dioxanone) hard segments and oligo(ε-caprolactone) switching segments. Using coaxial electrospinning, the authors prepared scaffolds whose microfibres all had a similar outer diameter (about 1.4 µm) but different degrees of hollowness — 0%, 13% and 33% — confirmed by scanning electron microscopy. Cyclic thermomechanical tensile tests revealed a pronounced dual-shape effect for every material, and the scaffold with 33% hollowness showed the highest shape-recovery ratio. The work demonstrates that the degree of hollowness, which changes macromolecular chain orientation, is a useful design parameter for tuning both the mechanical and shape-memory behaviour of electrospun shape-memory scaffolds.