Preparation of ultrafine fibrous zein membranes via electrospinning

Abstract

Zein is a protein in corn gluten meal. It has been investigated for use as a structural material because it is renewable and biodegradable. Potential applications of zein include use in coating, film and fiber. In this paper, ultrafine fibrous zein membranes were produced by electrospinning of an 80 wt% ethanol aqueous solution. The morphology of fibers was affected by parameters such as polymer concentration and electric field. As the concentration of the solution increased, wrinkled beads became fewer and fibers became thicker. Fibers were mainly generated above a polymer concentration of 21 wt% with an electric field of 15 kV. However, with a 30 kV field fibers were already generated above 18 wt%.

Sub-micron sized saccharide fibres via electrospinning

“…The electrospinning of biopolymers such as chitosan polysaccharides [5][6][7][8][9][10], cellulose compounds [11][12][13][14], and proteins like collagen [15][16][17][18], zein [19][20][21][22][23][24], bovine serum albumin [25] and others [25][26][27][28][29][30] is well described in the literature. Electrospun polysaccharides [31,32] and other bio-polymer based nanofibres show significant potential for a variety of biomedical applications [33][34][35] such as tissue engineering, wound dressing and cosmetics [15,34,36,37].…”

Surface morphology and beta-phase formation of single polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) composite nanofibers

“…As it can be seen, flow rate curve showed almost a horizontal trend, which implies that the nanofiber size is not very sensitive to this parameter. The formation of beads has been widely reported in the electrospinning process [35][36][37], and it has been considered as the main drawback of the electrospun fibers [35]. The formation of bead-free nanofibers is favorable in almost all applications of electrospun nanofibers.…”

Perspectives of Chitin and Chitosan Nanofibrous Scaffolds in Tissue Engineering

“…The Young's modulus was increased after cross-linking, however, the ultimate tensile strength, tensile strain, and water sorption capability decreased after crosslinking. Zein is a relatively straightforward biopolymer to electrospin (Miyoshi, Toyohara, & Minematsu, 2005;Torres-Giner et al, 2008b). Additionally, zein has low toxicity and has also being studied in a broad range of areas, such as the food, pharmaceutical, and biodegradable plastics industry (Corradini et al, 2006).…”