also be used for medical purposes. The electrospun scaffolds made for tissue engineering applications can be penetrated with cells to treat or replace biological targets. Nanofibrous wound dressings have excellent capability to isolate the wound from microbial infections. Other medical textile materials such as sutures are also attainable via electrospinning. Through the addition of a drug substance into the electrospinning solution or melt diverse fibrous drug delivery systems (e.g., implants, transdermal patches, oral forms) can be prepared. Interestingly, electrospinning allows to fabricate nanofibers with advanced architecture that can be used to promote the delivery of multiple drugs at the same time and with different kinetics. Cosmetic Electrospun nanomaterials have been employed to control their delivery so they can work within skin to improve its appearance. Electrospinning is an alternative to traditional nanoemulsions and nanoliposomes. Pharmaceutical manufacturing The continuous manner and the effective drying effect enable the integration of electrospinning into continuous pharmaceutical manufacturing systems. The synthesized liquid drug can be quickly turned into an electrospun solid product processable for tableting and other dosage forms. Composites Ultra-fine electrospun fibers show clear potential for the manufacture of long fiber composite materials. Application is limited by difficulties in making sufficient quantities of fiber to make substantial large scale articles in a reasonable time scale. For this reason medical applications requiring relatively small amounts of fiber are a popular area of application for electrospun fiber reinforced materials. Electrospinning is being investigated as a source of cost-effective, easy to manufacture wound dressings, medical implants, and scaffolds for the production of artificial human tissues. These scaffolds fulfill a similar purpose as the extracellular matrix in natural tissue. Biodegradable polymers, such as polycaprolactone and polysaccharides, are typically used for this purpose. These fibers may then be coated with collagen to promote cell attachment, although collagen has successfully been spun directly into membranes. Catalysts Electrospun fibers may have potential as a surface for enzymes to be immobilized on. These enzymes could be used to break down toxic chemicals in the environment, among other things. Mass production Thus far, at least eight countries in the world have companies which provide industrial-level and laboratory-scale electrospinning machines: three companies each in Italy and Czech Republic, two each in Iran, Japan, and Spain, and one each in the Netherlands, New Zealand and Turkey. References Further reading External links Polish Academy of Science's page on electrospinning How to describe the electrospinning process Hackaday,