Reducing the content of carrier polymer in pectin nanofibers by electrospinning at low loading followed with selective washing

Published Date

1 February 2016, Vol.59:885–893, doi:10.1016/j.msec.2015.10.086

Title 

Reducing the content of carrier polymer in pectin nanofibers by electrospinning at low loading followed with selective washing

• Author 

• Sisi Cui ^a,b,1
• Bing Yao ^a,1
• Xue Sun ^a
• Junli Hu ^a,,
• Yifa Zhou ^b,,
• Yichun Liu ^a,,

• aCentre for Advanced Optoelectronic Functional Materials Research, Key Laboratory for UV Light-Emitting Materials and Technology of the Ministry of Education, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, Jilin 130024, China
• bSchool of Life Sciences, Northeast Normal University, Changchun, Jilin 130024, China

Received 21 July 2015. Revised 20 September 2015. Accepted 26 October 2015. Available online 30 October 2015.

Highlights

• •
  The content of carrier polymer in pectin nanofibers was greatly reduced.
• •
  The pectin nanofibers possess high mechanical strength.
• •
  The pectin nanofibers are promising biomedical materials.

Abstract

Nanofibers of natural polymers represent an essential class of materials in biomedicine. Pectin is a plant-sourced anionic polysaccharide widely used in food products and biomedicine owning to its abundance, biocompatibility and inherent bioactivity. However, current electrospun pectin nanofibers are suffered from high content of carrier polymer, which may lead to low integrity and mechanical strength as well as in vivo toxicity. We report here a strategy to reduce the content of carrier polymer, polyethylene oxide (PEO) in our study, in pectin nanofibers, via electrospinning at low loading followed with selective washing. With improved electrospinning condition, we first enabled electrospinning of pectin nanofibers at low PEO loading. Then the PEO was removed by washing with a selective solvent to give pectin nanofibers containing only 1.5% PEO. The strategy was versatile to pectins from various sources and of various degree of esterification. The pectin nanofibers exhibited Young's modulus as high as 358.5 MPa. In view of their rich bioactivity, the pectin nanofibers of low content of carrier polymer are promising materials for a wide range of biomedical applications.

Graphical abstract

The content of carrier polymer in pectin nanofibers was reduced to as low as 1.5% through electrospinning at low loading followed with selective washing. The pectin nanofibers with high mechanical strength and potential biological activity are promising biomedical materials.

Keywords

• Pectin
• Nanofibers
• Reduce
• Carrier polymer

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• ⁎ 
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