Paper BI+PB-TuP9
Plasma-assisted Fabrication of Silver/Bacterial Cellulose/Chitosan Functional Nano-composites and Their Properties

Tuesday, November 8, 2016, 6:30 pm, Room Hall D

Bacterial cellulose and chitosan are renewable natural polymers and have many favorable properties such as biocompatibility, biodegradability and low toxicity. So, they have been extensively used in drug delivery systems, gene therapy, tissue engineering, and biosensor applications. Silver nanoparticles have attracted much attention for their unusual chemical and physical properties and have been widely applied in sensors, antibacterial and photocatalytic areas. The synthesis of nanomaterials with different chemical composition, size distribution, and controlled monodispersity has become an important research area in nanotechnology. Many kinds of methods such as vapor deposition, solvent-thermal, sol-gel, electrochemistry and microwave have been developed to fabricate nanomaterials. So far, plasma technology has become an important approach to prepare and reinforce materials and surfaces. This work seeks to fabricate nanoparticles/natural polymer functional composites via an atmospheric pressure plasma method. Comparing many traditional methods, atmospheric pressure plasma jet can induce chemical reactions in mild conditions, which can guarantee the purity of system and will not destroy the structure of natural polymers.

In this work, silver/bacterial cellulose/chitosan functional composites are fabricated via an atmospheric pressure plasma method. Plasma can produce many active radicals including reduction species and oxygen species, which can trigger chemical reaction. Ag+ in the reaction system can attach to the surface of bacterial cellulose and chitosan via bonding. By controlling the reaction condition, Ag+ can be reduced to Ag(0) and form Ag nanoparticles under plasma treatment. The existence of bacterial cellulose and chitosan can limit the growth and prevent the aggregation of particles, which is very critical to form nanostructure. SEM, XRD, XPS, FT-IR are employed to examine the morphology and structures of as prepared nano-composites. The biocompatibility and antibacterial properties are also studied. All results reveal that Ag nanoparticles are successfully formed and well dispersed in bacterial cellulose/chitosan. The as prepared silver/bacterial cellulose/chitosan nano-composites have excellent biocompatibility and antibacterial abilities, which can be used in biomedical areas. This convenient synthesis strategy based on atmospheric pressure plasma could be extended to fabricate other nanoparticles/bacterial cellulose/chitosan composites.