Fabrication of high performance chitosan/polyvinyl alcohol nanofibrous mat with controlled morphology and optimised diameter

Abstract

The main aim of the present study is to fabricate a high performance chitosan (CS)/polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) electrospun nanofibrous mat having a high content of CS, a desirable morphology (defect‐free structure) and a superfine diameter (approx. 100 nm). As electrospinning of constructions containing CS is known as a complex process, it is necessary to employ systematic control and optimisation of processes. In this regard, the controlling and optimisation of the processes were followed by two subsequent stages. In the first stage, morphology controlling parameters were investigated with respect to CS/PVA solution characteristics including CS concentration, solvent concentration and the content of the partner polymer (PVA). In the second stage, in order to attain the finest possible diameter, process modelling was carried out in terms of processing parameters (applied voltage, nozzle‐collector distance and feed rate) by using response surface methodology (RSM). According to the experimental results of the first stage, the best morphological structure containing the highest content of CS was obtained under 3% (w/v) of CS, concentrated acetic acid (90%) and 20% weight ratio of PVA. The significance of the applied model was confirmed by statistical approaches and the effect of the selected parameters on the diameter was studied. Experimentally, the finest diameter of 104 ± 18 nm was obtained under optimised processing parameters determined from the RSM technique. The experimental value of the nanofibre diameter was in close agreement with the predicted value in which the prediction error of the model was only 1.92% confirming the high reliability of the applied model.

Preparation of PVA/Chitosan samples by electrospinning and film casting methods and evaluating the effect of surface morphology on their antibacterial behavior

“…Solution viscosity in turn effects on fiber diameter and morphological structure. On the other hand, solvents play a key role in the electrospinning process through influence on surface tension of the solution [21]. In this work, the M w of chitosan crude powder, based on viscosimetry results and equation (1), was about 860 KDa, which is a relatively high molecular weight for chitosan.…”

“…Electrospinning is a versatile method for producing nanofibers from various synthetic and natural polymers, but the electrospinning of chitosan is hard to achieve due to the complicated behavior of its solutions. Auxilary polymers such as PEO [19,20] or PVA [5,21] have been used to improve electrospinability of chitosan. However, to the best of our knowledge, there is no report on evaluating the effect of production method on morphology of produced samples and their antibacterial effects, which is the subject of this research.…”

Performance improvements in structural characteristics of chitosan-based nanofibrous composite membrane for using in liquid filtration

“…Description of the electrospinning setup and details of optimization process have been expressed previously [17].…”

Modeling and optimization of antibacterial activity of the chitosan‐based hydrogel films using central composite design

“…There was a strong literary support which shows performances of polymer blends are better than applying individual polymers . Therefore, we selected chitosan as a dressing material due to the mentioned reasons and PVA as chitosan partner which has nontoxicity, biocompatibility, and biodegradability, and strong hydrogen bonds formation with chitosan on a molecular level . Besides chitosan and PVA, we selected thyme honey and gelatin to exploit their special characteristics for wound healing.…”

“…14 Therefore, we selected chitosan as a dressing material due to the mentioned reasons and PVA as chitosan partner which has nontoxicity, biocompatibility, and biodegradability, and strong hydrogen bonds formation with chitosan on a molecular level. 12 Besides chitosan and PVA, we selected thyme honey and gelatin to exploit their special characteristics for wound healing. Honey has been used in wound care due to its medicinal properties and antimicrobial property besides providing a moist healing environment without danger of bacterial infection.…”