KARAKTERISASI SIFAT TARIK MEMBRAN SERAT NANO POLIVINIL ALKOHOL (PVA)/ KITOSAN YANG DIFABRIKASI DENGAN METODE ELEKTROSPINNING
Abstract
Chitosan and polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) are biopolymer materials being developed in biomedical applications, one of them is used as wound dressing material under the considerations that they have healing effect and their biocompatible characteristics with human’s tissues. Wound dressing materials are produced by applying nanofibers’ basis using electrospinning method so that the produced materials can have better quality. In order to produce good nanofibers’ membrane, the preparation materials are needed. Based on that consideration, this study fabricates the nanofibers membrane from chitosan and PVA in blend condition through electrospinning method by varying the chitosan concentrations to get the effect of chitosan addition to PVA solution to the morphology and tensile strength of nanofibers of chitosan/PVA.
The fabrication of nanofibers was first done through dissolving Chitosan to the acid condition by using 2% acetate acid in the chitosan concentration’s variations; 1%, 3%, 5% and 7%. After that, chitosan solution as filler was mixed with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) 10% by following the percentage of mixing PVA and chitosan 95:5. The parameters of the electrospinning used in this study were the electrical voltage 18kV, the TCD distance 16.5 cm, internal diameter (ID) of syringe needle 0.6 mm, and flow rate 0.33 μl/min. There were two kinds of characterizations done in this study, both of them were physical and mechanical testing. The physical testing that has been done covered the viscosities testing and Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), the mechanical testing that has been done in this study was tensile testing by having the standard of ASTM D 882 using the universal testing machine (UTM).
The results of this research show that the solution characteristic of spinning influences the morphology of nanofibers membrane. The increment of viscosity can influence the uniformity of nanofibers diameter. The solution without chitosan’s addition had the lowest viscosity value; it was 339.9 cP with the distribution of diameter size was mostly 150 nm. The highest viscosity value was 564.9 cP and it was gained from the 7% chitosan solution sample with the distribution of the diameter size was mostly 350 nm. The tensile strength test showed that the nanofibers with 7% chitosan concentration having the lowest tensile strength; it was 3.68 MPa with elongation 160%. The optimum result was showed from the sample with the 3% chitosan concentration having the highest tensile strength; it was 5.6207 MPa with max elongation 150% with the average diameter size was 271 nm. Nanofibers membrane with the 3% chitosan concentration addition meets the standard qualification of wound dressing materials (tensile strength 1-24 MPa and elongation 17-207%).