Fabrication of poly lactic acid/ chitosan/ nanocrystalline cellulose nanofibers using needleless electrospinning for drug delivery applications /
Murtaza Haider Syed
- xvii, 221 pages : illustrations ; 30 cm.+ 1 CD-ROM
Faculty of Chemical and Process Engineering Technology
Thesis (Doctor of Philosophy) -- Universiti Malaysia Pahang – 2025
Includes bibliographical references
Electrospinning (ES) is the most advanced and robust method to generate biopolymeric nanofibers. However, the conventional needle based ES is unsuitable primarily due to its needle clogging and low throughput. These issues are addressed by the more advanced needless electrospinning (NES) setup. Nanofibers have numerous biomedical applications and drug delivery is among the major applications. However, drug delivery systems (DDS) are usually without a specialized drug carrier and hence lack a sustained release. In addition, DDSs compromise either on the sustained release or the biocompatibility and disintegration of the system inside the body. The current work focuses on developing a biocompatible and sustained DDS. For the first objective, nanocrystalline cellulose was synthesized by acid hydrolysis for the drug carrier in the DDS. The four major parameters (type of acid, strength of acid, duration of treatment and temperature of treatment) were optimized. The synthesized NCC was then characterized using FTIR, XRD, and TEM. The highest crystallinity (70%) was obtained using 32% sulphuric acid for 3.5 hr at 50 C. The second objective was achieved by blending synthesized NCC (0.5 w/v%) with PLA (6 w/v%) and CS (1, 2 and 3 w/v%) for developing biofilms to select the optimum ratio. The developed biofilms were characterized using FTIR, SEM, XRD, and thermogravimetric analysis. After that, a solvent system was designed for nanofiber fabrication. A solvent system with dichloromethane/trifluoroacetic acid (9:1) fabricated bead free nanofibers with parametric conditions of 65 kV, 120 mm/sec speed and 210 mm height fabricated beads free nanofibers. The third objective was accomplished by using the drug loading onto NCC and drug dispersed (10 w/v%) strategies. The fabricated nanofibers were then characterized using SEM, SEM-EDX mapping, FTIR, XRD, and thermogravimetric analysis. The performance of the nanofibers was evaluated using swelling kinetic and weight loss. The nanofibers with the PLA/CS/NCC (10:0.1:0.05 w/v%) showed the best performance in the aqueous medium for the drug delivery application. Drug release was studied using UV-vis spectroscopy, and the developed DDSs were compared with the PLA/CS (10:0.1 w/v%). PLA/CS based DDS showed the burst release of 92.7% drug release at 30.5 hr. In comparison, PLA/CS/NCC/DFS showed a two-step drug releasing profile, with 85% of drug release in 96 hr. The PLA/CS/D-NCC DDS showed a three-step releasing profile, releasing 81% of the drug in 192 hr. In the case of drug release kinetics, PLA/CS DDS followed the saturation kinetics model, while PLA/CS/NCC/DFS and PLA/CS/D-NCC DDS followed the Korsmeyer-Peppas and Higuchi model and showed fickian drug release mechanism. The developed tri-biopolymeric DDS in this study showed a well sustained release drug and can be applied for various drug delivery in the pharmaceutical industry in future.
THE0010167 (Local)
Faculty of Chemical and Process Engineering Technology--Dissertations