Ilaria Cacciotti
University of Rome "Niccolò Cusano", Italy
Title: Biopolymers based multifunctional composite systems by electrospinning technique
Biography
Biography: Ilaria Cacciotti
Abstract
The formulation and development of multifunctional systems based on biopolymers (e.g. polycaprolactone, polylactide, polyhydroxyalkanoates, etc.) and natural and synthetic additives, both inorganic (e.g., calcium phosphates (CaP), bioglasses (BG), silica and calcium carbonate) and organic (e.g., agro-food byproducts, tannic acid and ascorbic acid), are gaining a lot of interest in order to provide innovative and improved properties, in terms of mechanical reinforcement, antioxidant and antimicrobial features for potential applications in the food packaging and biomedical sectors. In particular, in the food packaging sector the addition of proper fillers to biopolymeric matrices is strongly motivated by the need to improve their mechanical, thermal and gas barrier properties that avoid their industrial employment. Similarly, in the tissue engineering field several efforts are currently devoted to the devise of biomimetic multifunctional composites able to simulate the composition and/or the morphology of the tissue to be regenerated. Electrospinning is a low-cost and versatile technique which able to process several kinds of materials in fibers with large surface area-to-volume ratio and has recently emerged as a very promising approach, due to its ability to generate structures which well mimic those of the native tissue extracellular matrix typical of different biological tissues, and to entrap biomolecules, allowing their controlled release. Moreover, this technique occurs at ambient conditions, and, therefore is very suitable to encapsulate and stabilize thermolabile substances, ensuring their controlled release and their direct interaction with the environment, extending shelf life and food quality, in the case of food packaging applications. In this framework, composite fibrous mats were successfully extracts on the thermal, mechanical and biological properties of electrospun poly(lactic acid) fibers. J processed by electrospinning. The obtained systems were fully characterized in terms of microstructural, thermal, and mechanical and biological properties by observation at scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray diffraction, FT-IR spectroscopy measurements, differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), X-Ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, uniaxial tensile tests, and cytotoxicity tests.