Green Processing Mediated Novel Polyelectrolyte Nanofibers and Their Antimicrobial Evaluation

Abstract

Electrospun nanofiber membranes offer many advantages and their application in drug delivery and regenerative medicine is significant. Solvent based electrospinning processes typically use hazardous organic solvents that not only pose a health hazard to manufacturers and users of electrospinning but could also be trapped in trace amounts within the products that are delivered to the end users. Water‐mediated green electrospinning of a poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA)/poly(acrylic acid) (PAA) blend and cross‐linking of the nanofiber membrane was attempted by heat treatment. The resulting nanofiber membrane was a polyelectrolyte coated in a layer by layer (LBL) method using poly(ethyleneimine) (PEI)/PAA polymers. The polyelectrolyte coated and uncoated nanofibers were characterized with IR, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and tensile strength measurements. The SEM images showed the swelling nature of the LBL polyelectrolyte nanofibers or the hydrogel nanofibers. The antimicrobial activity of the membranes was evaluated using the E. coli strain and compared with the polyelectrolyte untreated control. The polyelectrolyte membranes exhibited strong antimicrobial activity in comparison to the control and holds potential application in wound dressing materials or specific applications as wound dressing hydrogel nanofibers.

Innovative Methods and Applications in Mucoadhesion Research

“…Moreover, the inherent mucoadhesive properties of some biopolymers can be exploited when developing mucoadhesive nanofibers. Thus, biopolymers with known adhesive properties (such as alginate and chitosan) have been electrospun with increased bioadhesion of the nanofibers compared to those made from synthetic polymers . However, the physico‐chemical properties of nanofibers does not necessarily correlate with those of the unprocessed material, for which reason mucoadhesion of biopolymeric nanofibers in general must be studied.…”

“…Thus, biopolymers with known adhesive properties (such as alginate and chitosan) have been electrospun with increased bioadhesion of the nanofibers compared to those made from synthetic polymers. [74,75] However, the physico-chemical properties of nanofibers does not necessarily correlate with those of the unprocessed material, [76] for which reason mucoadhesion of biopolymeric nanofibers in general must be studied. Also, the effect of fiber morphology on the mucoadhesive properties, such as fiber diameter, is yet to be explored.…”

PVA/Carbon Dot Nanocomposite Hydrogels for Simple Introduction of Ag Nanoparticles with Enhanced Antibacterial Activity

“…[1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9] In particular, polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) hydrogel has been widely studied and well demonstrated to be an ideal biomaterial due to its excellent mechanical properties, biocompatibility, and low water absorption abilities. [10][11][12][13][14][15] However, when the water content is higher than 80 wt%, the pure PVA hydrogel prepared by freeze-thaw method could not always keep its strong mechanical properties, [16,17] which limited its applications. Fortunately, the addition of the nanomaterials into PVA hydrogel to form composite hydrogel is a good way to improve its mechanical properties.…”

Bioactive Applications for Electrospun Fibers

“…The LBL-treated membrane showed strong antimicrobial activity against Escherichia coli and the inhibition increased with an increase in polyelectrolyte concentration. 20 …”