The Effects of Concentration Ratios on the Particle Size of CHI-ALG-CaCl2 Nanocarriers

Abstract

Nanotechnology is highly desirable in numbers of industry including cosmeceutical and pharmaceutical. However, the nanoparticle size is greatly varied by the method of synthesising them such as the addition of calcium chloride. Hence, the present study was carried out to investigate the effect of calcium chloride concentration on nanoparticle size when added to the chitosan and alginate nanocarriers. For this purpose, we have performed the preliminary study on the antioxidant activities of Cymbopogon sp. extracts obtained through decoction and infusion method. From this preliminary study, the optimal mixture ratio of extract, including five different ratios of CHI-ALG/CaCl2 nanocarriers which were prepared with ratio of 1:3:0, 1:3:2, 1:3:5, 1:3:10 and 1:3:20 was used to formulate the nanocarrier. Comparing both methods, decoction gives the highest antiradical activity which indicating strong antioxidant potential compared to infusion, are selected to be formulated into nanoparticle. CHI-ALG/CaCl2 nanocarriers were then synthesised to encapsulate antioxidant extracts for topical delivery. Each sample of nanoparticles was evaluated for its size distributions, polydispersity index (PdI) and zeta potential by dynamic light scattering using DelsaMax Pro (Beckman Coulter, USA). The experiment was conducted with five different ratios of CHI-ALG/CaCl2 nanocarriers which were prepared with ratio of 1:3:0, 1:3:2, 1:3:5, 1:3:10 and 1:3:20 in a volume of 50 ml with 1:3:0 acts as a negative control. The best particle size was observed at 1:3:2 mixture ratio with 0.76-fold change (350.47 ± 36.12 nm) from the control (460.03 ± 107.17 nm) which falls in the acceptable range of desirable size of nanoparticles. The nanoparticles produced in this study showed PdI values less than 1, showing good uniformity. The zeta potential value for the all mixture ratios are high (>20 mV) which is able to prevent aggregation of the nanoparticle. As a conclusion, addition of calcium chloride at 1:3:2 to chitosan and alginate has improved the size of nanoparticles containing antioxidant extract of Cymbopogon sp.