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. 2019 Sep 1;12(17):2808.
doi: 10.3390/ma12172808.

Electrospinning of Fish Gelatin Solution Containing Citric Acid: An Environmentally Friendly Approach to Prepare Crosslinked Gelatin Fibers

Anna Liguori  1 , Jone Uranga  2 , Silvia Panzavolta  1 , Pedro Guerrero  2 , Koro de la Caba  3 , Maria Letizia Focarete  4
Affiliations

Electrospinning of Fish Gelatin Solution Containing Citric Acid: An Environmentally Friendly Approach to Prepare Crosslinked Gelatin Fibers

Anna Liguori et al. Materials (Basel). .

Abstract

The majority of the crosslinking approaches employed to confer water resistance properties to electrospun gelatin mats are based on the use of potential cytotoxic agents, turning out to be not suitable for biomedical applications. Environmentally friendly chemical strategies based on the use of non-toxic agents are, therefore, strongly demanded. In the present work, the possibility to produce crosslinked electrospun fish gelatin mats by electrospinning an aqueous solution, containing citric acid as a crosslinking agent, is reported. The effect of pH on solution rheological properties, as well as on the electrospun mat morphology, chemistry, and crosslinking degree, is assessed. The increase of solution pH from 1.8 to 3.7 allows for obtaining fibers that maintain the fibrous morphology also in the mat. Subsequent thermal treatment of the electrospun mat (80 °C for 30 min) turns out to increase the crosslinking degree and morphological stability of the mat.

Keywords: citric acid; crosslinking degree; electrospinning; fish gelatin; gelatin structure; pH; thermal treatment.

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Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Scheme 1
Scheme 1
Scheme of the proposed approach to produce electrospun crosslinked gelatin fish fibrous mats.
Figure 1
Figure 1
Time dependence of storage modulus G’ (square) and loss modulus G” (circle) of PG (green curves), FG (red curves), and FG+NaOH (black curves) solutions.
Figure 2
Figure 2
OM (a,d) and SEM images (b,c,e,f) of electrospun mats from FG (a,b,c) and FG+NaOH (d,e,f) solutions: mats as spun (a,b,d,e) and after the thermal treatment (c,f).
Figure 3
Figure 3
WAXD patterns of FG powder, FG, FG+NaOH, and thermal treated FG+NaOH electrospun mats.
Figure 4
Figure 4
ATR-FTIR spectra of FG powder, FG, FG+NaOH, and thermally treated FG+NaOH electrospun mats (a) from 4000 to 800 cm−1 and (b) from 1850 to 1000 cm−1.
Figure 5
Figure 5
Curve fitting spectra of amide I band (black curve) for (a) FG powder, (b) FG, (c) FG+NaOH, and (d) thermal treated FG+NaOH electrospun mats (β-sheet conformation, red curve; random coil conformation, brown curve; α-helix conformation, blue curve; β-turn conformation, green curve).
Figure 5
Figure 5
Curve fitting spectra of amide I band (black curve) for (a) FG powder, (b) FG, (c) FG+NaOH, and (d) thermal treated FG+NaOH electrospun mats (β-sheet conformation, red curve; random coil conformation, brown curve; α-helix conformation, blue curve; β-turn conformation, green curve).
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