Publication details
Plasma Processing: an Essential Part of Nanofibrous Composite Engineering
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2022 |
| Type | Conference abstract |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | The advantage of polymer nanofibers (NFs) forming nonwoven mats by electrospinning is their large surface area, high porosity, and good pore interconnectivity. Thus, the polymer mats are excellent as carriers or semipermeable membranes. However, they are not self-supporting, which opens the task of ensuring their good adhesion to underlying support, e.g., nonwoven polypropylene (PP) textile. Vice-versa, the nanofibrous mats can be carriers of drugs, proteins, or micro/nanoparticles. We have already demonstrated that plasma-processed polycaprolactone (PCL) mats are perspective materials for constructing artificial tissues or drug delivery systems [1,2,3]. The PCL was selected in these studies because it is a biodegradable polymer used in many FDA-approved surgical implants and drug delivery devices. It has good mechanical properties and long-term stability in vivo. Yet, like any other synthetic polymer, it imposes problems due to its hydrophobicity and inertness. In this work, we demonstrate that plasma processing is an efficient method for modifying synthetic polymers when the engineering of nanofibrous composites is required. First, we demonstrate that plasma treatment of PP nonwoven textile increases the adhesion of electrospun nanofibrous mat collected on it. For this purpose, low-pressure capacitively coupled plasma or atmospheric pressure plasma jet can be both efficient, but atmospheric pressure plasma has the advantage of being easier implemented in the production lines. Second, we obtained uniform and dense immobilization of lignin-based nanoparticles on the PCL plasma-processed mats. REFERENCES: [1] S. Miroshnichenko et al., Nanomaterials 9 (2019) 637.; [2] E. Permyakova et al., Materials & Design 153 (2018) 60.; [3] I. Nemcakova et al., Int. J. Mol. Sci. 2020. |