RESUMEN

Pectin, a naturally occurring and biorenewable polysaccharide, is derived from plant cell wall tissue and used in applications ranging from food processing to biomedical engineering. Due to extraction methods and source variation, there is currently no consensus in literature as to the exact structure of pectin. Here, we have studied key material properties of electrospun pectin blends with polyethylene oxide (PEO) (1:1, v/v) in order to demonstrate the fabrication of a fibrous and less toxic material system, as well as to understand the effects of source variability on the resulting fibrous mats. The bulk pectin degree of esterification (DE) estimated using FTIR (bulk apple pomace (AP)=28%, bulk citrus peel (CP)=86% and bulk sugar beet pulp (SBP)=91%) was shown to inversely correlate with electrospun fiber crystallinity determined using XRD (PEO-AP=37%, PEO-CP=28% and PEO-SBP=23%). This in turn affected the trend observed for the mean fiber diameter (n=50) (PEO-AP=124 ± 26 nm, PEO-CP=493 ± 254 nm and PEO-SBP=581 ± 178 nm) and elastic tensile moduli (1.6 ± 0.2 MPa, 4.37 ± 0.64 MPa and 2.49 ± 1.46 MPa, respectively) of the fibrous mats. Electrospun fibers containing bulk AP had the lowest DE, highest crystallinity, smallest mean fiber diameter, and lowest tensile modulus compared to either the bulk CP or bulk SBP. Bound water in PEO-CP fiber and bulk pectin impurities in PEO-SPB were observed to influence fiber branching and mean diameter distributions, which in turn influenced the fiber tensile properties. These results indicate that pectin, when blended with PEO in water, produces submicron fibrous mats with pectin influencing the blend fiber properties. Moreover, the source of pectin is an important variable in creating electrospun blend fibrous mats with desired material properties.

Asunto(s)

RESUMEN

For several reasons, the electrospinning of nanofibrous mats comprised purely of biopolymers, such as hyaluronic acid (HA) has been difficult to achieve. Most notably, due to its polyelectrolytic nature, very low polymer concentrations exhibit very high solution viscosities. Thus, it is challenging to obtain the critical chain entanglement concentration necessary for biopolymer electrospinning to ensue. While the successful electrospinning of HA fibers from a sodium hydroxide:dimethylformamide (NaOH:DMF) system has been reported, the diameter of these fibers was well above 100nm. Moreover, questions regarding the degradation of HA within the solvent system arose. These factors supported our ongoing research into determining an improved solvent system. In this study, the use of a less basic (pH 11) aqueous ammonium hydroxide (NH4OH) solvent system, NH4OH:DMF, allowed for the fabrication of HA mats having an average fiber diameter of 39±12nm. Importantly, while using this solvent system, no degradation effects were observed and the continuous electrospinning of pure HA fibers was possible.