An Overview of the Design of Chitosan-Based Fiber Composite Materials

Abstract

Chitosan composite fibrous materials continue to generate significant interest for wastewater treatment, food packaging, and biomedical applications. This relates to the relatively high surface area and porosity of such fibrous chitosan materials that synergize with their unique physicochemical properties. Various methods are involved in the preparation of chitosan composite fibrous materials, which include the modification of the biopolymer that serve to alter the solubility of chitosan, along with post-treatment of the composite materials to improve the water stability or to achieve tailored functional properties. Two promising methods to produce such composite fibrous materials involve freeze-drying and electrospinning. Future developments of such composite fibrous materials demands an understanding of the various modes of preparation and methods of structural characterization of such materials. This review contributes to an understanding of the structure–property relationships of composite fibrous materials that contain chitosan, along with an overview of recent advancements concerning their preparation.

Enhanced Macroporous Cationic Chitosan Hydrogel by Freezing and Thawing Method with Superadsorption Capacity for Anionic Dyes

“…In contrast with other study which presented chitosan hydrogel with rough surface but with no pores were observed on the surface [25]. This is due to the freeze-thawing method has been used to create porous chitosan hydrogel with interconnected pores [42]. During cooling the prepared chitosan hydrogel, the nucleation and the ice crystals was grown and moves into nonnucleated solution leading to change the morphology and form interconnected pores [46].…”

“…Moreover, GO and CNT particles may be blocking the pores of chitosan hydrogel, which is impact on the diffusion of the pollutants through the porous structure and led to decrease the adsorption capacity [40]. Therefore, various researches have been used physical modi cations of hydrogels to control the porosity to form superporous structure with high swelling properties such as gas blowing or freeze drying techniques, which can increase its adsorption capacity [41][42][43]. The freeze-drying technique has its own disadvantage as well such as high energy required, time consuming and may led to shrinkage the network structure because the interfacial tension resulted by solvent evaporation thus limiting their usage [44,45].…”

Adhesion and Proliferation of Mesenchymal Stem Cells on Plasma-Coated Biodegradable Nanofibers

“…Figure 2a highlights the main areas of research that have made a significant contribution to this field. The most promising method for obtaining biodegradable nanofibers is electrospinning from polymer solutions [3,4]. Electrospinning of nanofibers is possible from a solution of both natural polymers (collagen, gelatin, chitosan) and synthetic ones (PCL, polyethylene glycol, etc.).…”

“…Nanofibers obtained from natural polymers demonstrate high biocompatibility; however, obtaining stable and homogeneous nanofibers is a rather tricky task [5]. For a long time, it was almost impossible to obtain pure collagen and chitosan nanofibers and, therefore, fibers consisting of a mixture of polymers (for example, chitosan/polyethylene oxide) were obtained [3,4]. In addition, collagen is expensive, and collagen and gelatin nanofibers are often unstable in an aquatic environment.…”

“…However, this requires preliminary mineralization of the nanofibers (for example, due to the growth of a hydroxyapatite film) by immersing nanofibers in a synthetic physiological solution (SPS) which contains calcium and sodium salts. The growth of hydroxyapatites can be accelerated if the nanofibers are modified with COOH groups [1,4,24,25]. The obtained nanocomposites can be attractive candidates for bone implants or bone replacement/regeneration materials.…”