Abstract
A new type of antimicrobial, biocompatible and toughness enhanced ultra-thin fiber mats for biomedical applications is presented. The tough and porous fiber mats were obtained by electrospinning solution-blended poly (methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) and polyethylene oxide (PEO), filled with up to 25 wt % of Lanasol—a naturally occurring brominated cyclic compound that can be extracted from red sea algae. Antibacterial effectiveness was tested following the industrial Standard JIS L 1902 and under agitated medium (ASTM E2149). Even at the lowest concentrations of Lanasol, 4 wt %, a significant bactericidal effect was seen with a 4-log (99.99%) reduction in bacterial viability against S. aureus, which is one of the leading causes of hospital-acquired (nosocomial) infections in the world. The mechanical fiber toughness was insignificantly altered up to the maximum Lanasol concentration tested, and was for all fiber mats orders of magnitudes higher than electrospun fibers based on solely PMMA. This antimicrobial fiber system, relying on a dissolved antimicrobial agent (demonstrated by X-ray diffraction and Infrared (IR)-spectroscopy) rather than a dispersed and “mixed-in” solid antibacterial particle phase, presents a new concept which opens the door to tougher, stronger and more ductile antimicrobial fibers.
Highlights
Electrospinning is a simple technique to continuously generate ultra-fine high surface area fibrous mats with fiber diameters ranging from tenths of nanometers to several microns
The distributions of the diameters of these fibers are given in Figure 2a and their averages are displayed in Figure 2b, showing a small increase in fiber diameter (1.2 ± 0.09 to 1.4 ± 0.19 μm) as increasing amounts of Lanasol were added
This indicates that the presence of the antimicrobial compound hindered the crystallization of polyethylene oxide (PEO), resulting in an increased miscibility of the PEO and the PMMA with an evenly distributed and dissolved Lanasol component
Summary
Electrospinning is a simple technique to continuously generate ultra-fine high surface area fibrous mats with fiber diameters ranging from tenths of nanometers to several microns Their porous nature and the suitability of the technique for incorporating other materials within the fibers at the nanoscale level have prompted their use in a wide range of applications, such as: wound dressings, implant materials, or tissue scaffolds with high biocompatibility and antimicrobial capacity [1]. In this context, previous studies on antimicrobial electrospun fibers have extensively focused on the inclusion of silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) inside the fiber mats [2,3,4,5,6,7], since silver has a higher microbial toxicity than mercury, copper and cadmium [8]. At higher contents of Lanasol (above 4 wt %), even greater antimicrobial efficacy was observed, at the same time as the toughness of the fiber mats was unaffected, which is in contrast to all fiber systems relying on embedded solid antimicrobial fillers
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