Abstract
Pectin, a natural biopolymer mainly derived from citrus fruits and apple peels, shows excellent biodegradable and biocompatible properties. This study investigated the electrospinning of pectin-based nanofibers. The parameters, pectin:PEO (polyethylene oxide) ratio, surfactant concentration, voltage, and flow rate, were studied to optimize the electrospinning process for generating the pectin-based nanofibers. Oligochitosan, as a novel and nonionic cross-liker of pectin, was also researched. Nanofibers were characterized by using AFM, SEM, and FTIR spectroscopy. The results showed that oligochitosan was preferred over Ca2+ because it cross-linked pectin molecules without negatively affecting the nanofiber morphology. Moreover, oligochitosan treatment produced a positive surface charge of nanofibers, determined by zeta potential measurement, which is desired for tissue engineering applications.
Highlights
Tissue engineering shows promise for closing the gap between the number of people waiting for an organ transplant and the number of people receiving one by restoringElectronic supplementary material The online version of this article contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.1 3 Vol.:(0123456789)Applied Nanoscience (2018) 8:33–40Pectin is an anionic heteropolysaccharide found in the cell wall of all land plants (Noreen et al 2017)
poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) was used as a synthetic carrier to improve the electrospinning ability of polymers (Bonino et al 2011; Cui et al 2016)
It was found that no distinct nanofiber could be produced when the pectin’s percentage was either too high (70:30) or too low (30:70) (Fig. 1a)
Summary
Since pectin is composed of galacturonic acid with carboxyl groups, divalent cations, such as C a2+, can be used as cross-linkers (Cui et al 2017). This is very similar to the polysaccharide alginate (Bonino et al 2011; Feng et al 2017). Oligochitosan can potentially generate a positive surface charge of the nanofibers, due to its protonated amino groups (Zhang et al 2013) This is critical for tissue engineering applications, since a positively charged surface is preferred for cell adhesion (Ko et al 2015; Suga et al 2015; Zhang et al 2017). The goal of this research is to optimize the parameters for electrospinning of pectin-based nanofibers and explore the potential of using oligochitosan as a cross-linker
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