EFFECTS OF CROSSLINKING TEMPERATURE AND TIME ON THE PROPERTIES OF POLY- (ACRYLIC ACID-CO-MALEIC ACID) (PAMA) /POLY (VINYL ALCOHOL) (PVA) ELECTROSPUN NANOFIBER MATS

Abstract

The advantage of thermal crosslinking of nanofiber mats is that the nanofibers will not be easily dissolved and be able to adsorb drug substance when they are soaked in drug solution. Due to the simplicity and environmental friendliness of thermal crosslinking method, previous research prepared crosslinked electrospun nanofiber mats of PAMA/PVA using the thermal crosslinking process to obtain the mats with a negative charge, which can be used to immobilize a positive charge substance by adsorption method. However, the optimal temperature and time for the crosslinking process have not been reported. This study aimed to investigate the thermal crosslinking of electrospun PAMA/PVA fibers. Electrospinning of 50% PAMA/10% PVA solution at weight ratio of 45:55 was completed. The PAMA/PVA nanofibers were thermally crosslinked by placing them in a hot air oven at 100-140 ºC for 0.5-5 h. The morphology of the nanofiber mats was investigated by scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and the diameter was measured by J-micro vision® software. The water insolubilization and FT-IR were employed to evaluate the success of the crosslinking process. The smooth bead-free uniform fibers were obtained. The average fiber diameter of the electrospun nanofibers was 376.56 ± 72 nm. Increasing crosslinking time and temperature caused an increment in the degree of crosslinking resulting in a decrease in water solubilization. The desirable temperature and time for crosslinked PAMA/PVA nanofibers was 130 ºC for 5 h.