Preparation of Poly(L,L‐Lactide) Microparticles via Pickering Emulsions Using Chitin Nanocrystals

Abstract

The aim of the present study was to investigate an ability of chitin nanocrystals to be used as stabilizing components for fabrication of poly(L,L-lactide) microparticles via the Pickering oil/water emulsion solvent evaporation technique. The anisometric chitin nanocrystals were extracted from two different samples of crab shell chitin via acetic hydrolysis and analyzed using atomic force microscopy, dynamic light scattering, and FTIR spectroscopy. The extracted nanocrystals showed no difference in the chemical structure but possessed different morphology and aspect ratios as a function of raw chitin used. The effect of chitin nanocrystals characteristics and concentration in the aqueous phase on the total yield, size distribution, and shape and surface morphology of the prepared polylactide microparticles was evaluated.

Polysaccharides as Stabilizers for Polymeric Microcarriers Fabrication

“…On the other hand, both types of chitin nanocrystals were able to form microparticles with a lower mean size, indicating the relatively good ability to stabilize the interface (Figure 2). This ability was also increased with an increase in nanocrystals concentration in the aqueous phase [25].…”

“…DLS was realized with using a Zetatrac particle size analyzer (Microtrac, Inc., Montgomeryville, PA, USA) with the software program V.10.5.3. A "top-down" approach to fabrication of polysaccharide nanoparticles was realized by means of the isolation of nanocrystals from cellulose or chitin samples to form cellulose nanocrystals (Cel-NC) from bleached flax stalk cellulose and chitin nanocrystals from a chitin sample purchased from "Kombio" (Vladivostok, Russia) (Ch-K-NC) or "Xiamen Fine Chemical" (Xiamen, China) (Ch-X-NC), as was reported earlier [25,30,31].…”

“…Another approach, i.e., "bottom-up", is based on chitosan macromolecule self-aggregation or complexation [23]. A few works were focused on the fabrication of polymeric particles via Pickering emulsions stabilization by polysaccharide-based nanoparticles [24][25][26]. A tough shell of nanoparticles led to high resistance to coalescence during emulsification, giving rise to core/shell microparticles, which are very promising for various applications [27].…”

Estudio de las propiedades fisicoquímicas y biológicas de microencapsulados de compuestos bioactivos de Neem en matrices de quitosano

“…En la actualidad y en busca de compuestos de origen natural, se han formulado nanopartículas de quitina (CT) que sirvan como solidos capaces de estabilizar emulsiones (Tzoumaki et al, 2011(Tzoumaki et al, , 2015Gülseren & Corredig, 2013;Perrin et al, 2014;Ifuku et al, 2009Ifuku et al, , 2015Pang et al, 2017, Demina et al, 2018Barkhordari & Fathi, 2018;Larbi et al, 2018).…”

“…Los nanocristales (NCT) y nanofibrillas (NF) de CT, han cobrado interés debido a que se pueden aplicar en áreas alimenticias, farmacéuticas o cosméticas. Las NCT de manera convencional son obtenidos por hidrolisis ácida (Tzoumaki et al, 2011(Tzoumaki et al, , 2015Gülseren & Corredig, 2013;Perrin et al, 2014;Demina et al, 2018;Barkhordari & Fathi, 2018;Larbi et al, 2018), mientras que las NF pueden obtenerse por la oxidación mediada por TEMPO (Ifuku et al, 2015;Pang et al, 2017) o bien por métodos mecánicos (Ifuku et al, 2009;2014;Larbi et al, 2018). Si bien, tanto NCT como NF han sido empleadas para estabilizar emulsiones tipo Pickering, Larbi et al (2018) evaluaron las diferencias entre el uso de ambas, observando que las NF tienen una mejor capacidad de estabilización de emulsiones O/W debido a que tienen mayor viscosidad y mejor estabilidad térmica que los NCT que solo presentaron mayor grado de transparencia.…”