Most commonly, autologous grafts are used in tympanic membrane (TM) reconstruction. However, apart from the limited availability and the increased surgical risk, they cannot replicate the full functionality of the human TM properly. Hence, biomimetic synthetic TM implants have been developed in our project to overcome these drawbacks. These innovative TM implants are made from synthetic biopolymer polycaprolactone (PCL) and silk fibroin (SF) by electrospinning technology. Static and dynamic experiments have shown that the mechanical and oscillatory behavior of the TM implants can be tuned by adjusting the solution concentration, the SF and PCL mixing ratio and the electrospinning parameters. In addition, candidates for TM implants could have comparable acousto-mechanical properties to human TMs. Finally, these candidates were further validated in in vitro experiments by performing TM reconstruction in human cadaver temporal bones. The reconstructed TM with SF–PCL blend membranes fully recovered the acoustic vibration when the perforation was smaller than 50%. Furthermore, the handling, medium adhesion and transparency of the developed TM implants were similar to those of human TMs.

Shape memory polymers are gaining increasing attention, especially in the medical field, due to their ability to recover high deformations, low activation temperatures, and relatively high actuation stress. Furthermore, shape memory polymers can be applied as fiber-based solutions for the development of smart devices used in many fields, e.g., industry 4.0, medicine, and skill learning. These kind of applications require sensors, actors, and conductive structures. Textile structures address these applications by meeting requirements such as being flexible, adaptable, and wearable. In this work, the influence of spinning methods and parameters on the effect of shape memory polymer yarns was investigated, comparing melt and wet spinning. It is shown that the spinning method can significantly influence the strain fixation and generated stress during the activation of the shape memory effect. Furthermore, for wet spinning, the draw ratio could affect the stress conversion, influencing its efficiency. Therefore, the selection of the spinning process is essential for the setting of application-specific shape-changing properties.

Liquid crystal elastomers (LCE) are a promising material to achieve reversible actuation while being able to perform work, showing great potential as artificial muscles in soft robotics and medical technology. Here, a wet spinning process to prepare liquid crystal elastomer fibers (LCEF) with reversible actuation capability is presented. Furthermore, we demonstrate the ability to process side-chain liquid crystal (LC) 4-Methoxyphenyl 4-(3-butenyloxy)benzoate (MBB) into a fiber, enlarging the material variance available in this field. The wet spinning process is presented and discussed in terms of spinning parameters and their influence on fiber properties, especially LC orientation. Moderate draw ratios of up to 2.3 enable highly oriented mesogens (f = 0.64), enabling the contractile behavior. The generated MBB-based LCEF show low activation temperature (54.52 °C), temperature-dependent mechanical properties, reversible contraction behavior while lifting up to 140 times their own weight and are able to perform work of up to 3.857 J kg⁻¹. Actuation properties are compared with human skeletal muscle, and possible strategies of further enhancing the LCEF performance are discussed. The generated data show promising features of the LCEF for use as artificial muscle fibers in medical applications, e.g., prosthetics and artificial cardiac tissue.

Electrospun membranes have a great potential in myringoplasty, as the special microstructure of fibers could be comparable to the fiber structure of the tympanic membrane (TM), thus, making it an potential implant for tympanic membrane reconstruction. In this work, the microscale parameters of the fiber structure were studied in a numerical homogenization procedure. The aim of the investigations was to obtain an implant that has a compromise between acoustic and mechanical properties and which at macroscale is comparable with the human TM. The numerical results were verified with experiments on first samples.

The ideal tympanic membrane (TM) replacement should meet the requirement of low resistance for dynamic pressures up to about 1 Pa but high resistance for large static pressures up to about 5 kPa. Although electrospun membranes have a great potential to be used as a TM replacement, it is necessary to adjust its microstructure in order to mimic the acousto‐mechanical properties of human TM. Hence, in this work, homogenization modeling and FEM simulation of the middle ear were used to combine the microstructure of electrospun membranes to its macroscale function as TM scaffolds. The simulation results were finally verified with experimental data.