Investigation of the fabrication of nanofibers from aqueous polyvinyl alcohol solutions by electrospinning

Abstract

Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) refers to polymers that have great potential for medical and technical applications. Especially, the possibility of its medical application in nanofibres is of great interest due to its good water solubility, high biocompatibility and non-toxicity. PVA is used for various pharmaceutical and biomedical purposes, as a carrier for the delivery of proteins and drugs, as dressings, filter materials, and as artificial organs. Currently, many drug delivery systems have been developed, such as hydrogels or complex electronic microchips. Nanostructural materials are particularly advantageous for rapid drug release due to their high surface area to volume ratio. Both natural and synthetic polymers can be used to produce nanofiber materials, but the combination of different polymers (synthetic and natural) and the incorporation of various biologically active substances into them provides special properties to the finished materials. In this work, the properties of aqueous solutions based on polyvinyl alcohol were investigated: electrical conductivity, viscosity and pH. The influence of technological parameters of electroforming process on obtaining nanofibers from aqueous solutions of PVA. The optimum PVA concentration for the formation of nanostructures was determined equal to 8 wt.%. At this concentration, the PVA solution has electrical conductivity, viscosity and pH equal to 571 µS/cm, 107.23 mPa·s and 6.14 respectively. As part of the study, the electroforming process parameters were obtained to enable the production of nanofibers with a diameter of about 170 nm: distance between needle and collector 140 mm, spinning solution feed rate 0.2 ml/h and voltage between needle and collector 30 kV.