Chitosan/poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) nanofibers with antibacterial activity were prepared by the electrospinning of a chitosan/PVA solution with a small amount of silver nitrate (AgNO 3 ) and titanium dioxide (TiO 2 ). Nanofibers with diameters of 270-360 nm were obtained. The yield of low-viscosity chitosan (LCS)/PVA nanofibers was higher than that of high-viscosity chitosan (HCS)/PVA, and the water content of the HCS/PVA nanofibers and the LCS/PVA nanofibers were 430 and 390%, respectively. The nanofibers developed in this study exhibited antibacterial activities of 99 and 98% against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia coli, respectively.
ABSTRACT:The thermal behavior, thermal degradation kinetics, and pyrolysis of resol and novolac phenolic resins with different curing conditions, as a function of the formaldehyde/phenol (F/P) molar ratio (1.3, 1.9, and 2.5 for the resol resins and 0.5, 0.7, and 0.9 for the novolac resins) were investigated. The activation energy of the thermal reaction was studied with differential scanning calorimetry at five different heating rates (2, 5, 10, 20, and 40°C/min) between 50 and 300°C. The activation energy of the thermal decomposition was investigated with thermogravimetric analysis at five different heating rates (2, 5, 10, 20, and 40°C/min) from 30 to 800°C. The low molar ratio resins exhibited a higher activation energy than the high molar ratio resins in the curing process. This meant that less heat was needed to cure the high molar ratio resins. Therefore, the higher the molar ratio was, the lower the activation energy was of the reaction. As the thermal decomposition of the resol resins proceeded, the activation energy sharply decreased at first and then remained almost constant. The activation energy of the thermal decomposition for novolac resins with F/P ϭ 0.5 or F/P ϭ 0.7 was almost identical in all regions, whereas that for novolac resins with F/P ϭ 0.9 gradually decreased as the reaction proceeded.
This study presents a microfluidic method for the production of monodisperse poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) microspheres using continuous droplet formation and in situ photopolymerization in microfluidic devices. We investigated the flow patterns for the stable formation of droplets using capillary number and the flow rate of the hexadecane phase. Under the stable region, the resulting microspheres showed narrow size distribution having a coefficient of variation (CV) of below 1.8%. The size of microspheres (45~95 μm) could be easily controlled by changing the interfacial tension between the two immiscible phases and the flow rates of the dispersed or continuous phase.
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