Preparation of the chitosan containing nanofibers by electrospinning chitosan–gelatin complexes

Abstract

Electrospinning is an interesting technique, which provides a facile and an effective mean in producing nonwoven fibrous materials; however, for producing nanofibers, investigation of the electrospinning conditions is very important. In this study, chitosan, gelatin, and their polyelectrolyte complexes (PECs) were electrospun to prepare nonwoven nanofibrous mats. The concentrations of chitosan and gelatin solutions and electric field (kV/cm) were optimized. The solutions were then blended in different ratios (0-100%) to get electrospun nanofibrous mats. Solution concentration and electric field showed pronounced effect on the electrospinnability and fiber diameter of these systems. Mostly large beads coexisted with the fibers were observed for chitosan at 1 wt% solution concentration, which then showed good electrospinnability at 2 wt% (nanofiber diameter was 145 and 122 nm at 15 and 20 kV/10 cm, respectively), whereas gelatin showed no electrospinnability below 15 wt% solution concentration and a homogenous fibers network at 15 wt% (149 nm at 20 kV/10 cm). The morphology and diameter of chitosan-gelatin PEC nanofibers varied with the chitosan/gelatin ratio. The crystallinity of chitosan was also observed to reduce with electrospinning and addition of gelatin. View this article online at wileyonlinelibrary.com. V V C 2010 Society of Plastics Engineers POLYMER ENGINEERING AND SCIENCE--2010 FIG. 3. WAXS patterns for the crystalline structure changes of (a) chitosan film and (b) chitosan-gelatin PEC (80/20) electrospun fiber. FIG. 2. FTIR spectra of (a) gelatin, (b) chitosan, and (c) PEC.

Effect of parameters on the morphology and fibre diameters of edible electrospun chitosan-cellulose acetate-gelatin hybrid nanofibres

“…At the high concentration, above entanglement concentration, the nanoscaled fibres would be no optained. However, the flat fibres and the ribbontype fibre were achived [12,17]. For the diameter of CA fibres ranged from 47.61-142.85 nm and the average diameter was 85.142±24.05 nm.…”

“…Polymer concentration and viscosity are related factor, when one increased, the other would be increased that resulted to the size of diameter fibres. At low concentration, polymeric micro or nano-particle will be obtained, the suitable concentration, smooth, uniform and continuous nanofibres was presented [5,10,12,16].…”

“…Applied voltage resulted on the formation of Taylor cone according to the repulsive force in an opposite direction of the surface tension. The overcome state resulted on the initiation of fine jet from the cone and flying to collector [5,6,12]. In this experiment, effect of applied voltage on fibre morphology at 20, 23 and 26 kV were investigated.…”

“…They were used for several applications such as filtration membranes, nanofiber composites, wound dressing, tissue scaffolding, drug delivery systems and food packaging [7,11]. Morphology and fibre diameters of electrospun depended on various parameters that including solution properties, process parameters, and ambient parameters [2,5,12]. Understanding the parameters will help to fabricate the desirable electrospun nanofibers.…”

Thermoplastic Nanocomposites and Their Processing Techniques

“…During the last decade, due to the emergence of a new generation of hightechnology materials, the number of research groups involved in nanotechnology has increased exponentially covering a broad range of topics such as microelectronics (now known as nanoelectronics, because the critical dimension scale for modern devices has decreased to and /or below 100 nanometer (nm) (Paul & Robeson 2008)), polymer-based biomaterials (Haider et al,2007), nanoparticle drug delivery (Omer et al, 2011), miniemulsion particles (Zhang et al ., 2007;Wu et al, 2010)], layer-by-layer self-assembled polymer films (Lee & Cui 2009), electrospun nanofibers Haider et al, 2010), imprint lithography (Stephen et al, 1996), polymer blends and nanocomposites . The dimensional shift of materials from micro to nano produced theatrical changes in their physical properties and one such change is large surface area for a given volume (Haider et al,2007).…”