Abstract
The majority of the crosslinking approaches employed to confer water resistance properties to electrospun gelatin mats are based on the use of potential cytotoxic agents, turning out to be not suitable for biomedical applications. Environmentally friendly chemical strategies based on the use of non-toxic agents are, therefore, strongly demanded. In the present work, the possibility to produce crosslinked electrospun fish gelatin mats by electrospinning an aqueous solution, containing citric acid as a crosslinking agent, is reported. The effect of pH on solution rheological properties, as well as on the electrospun mat morphology, chemistry, and crosslinking degree, is assessed. The increase of solution pH from 1.8 to 3.7 allows for obtaining fibers that maintain the fibrous morphology also in the mat. Subsequent thermal treatment of the electrospun mat (80 °C for 30 min) turns out to increase the crosslinking degree and morphological stability of the mat.
Highlights
Gelatin is a polymer obtained from the thermal denaturation or chemical degradation of collagen.These processes involve the loss of the collagen triple-helix structure and the formation of random coil structure typical of gelatin
Of based citric acid and its potential crosslinking in results on efforts the feasibility of the process achieved for water/acetic solvents,ofcitric acid based this work have been carried outwere to identify a procedure for theacid production crosslinked binary solvent wasusing reported to be non-suitable for developing fibersacid
[31], our results demonstrate that electrospinning of fish gelatin (FG) from a citric acid/water solution without the addition of acetic acid to form microfibers was possible
Summary
Gelatin is a polymer obtained from the thermal denaturation or chemical degradation of collagen.These processes involve the loss of the collagen triple-helix structure and the formation of random coil structure typical of gelatin. Gelatin is a polymer obtained from the thermal denaturation or chemical degradation of collagen. Gelatin shows binding sites for cell adhesion, signaling, and differentiation, which make this polymer suitable in tissue engineering, wound dressing, and drug delivery [5,6,7,8,9]. In these sectors, electrospun nanofibrous mats are highly demanded, since they mimic the extracellular matrix and promote cell adhesion and proliferation due to their high porosity and surface area
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