Preparation and Characterization of Porous Cellulose Acetate Nanofiber Hydrogels
Lijie Jiang,
Xingyu Huang,
Chaochao Tian,
Yidan Zhong,
Ming Yan,
Chen Miao,
Ting Wu,
Xiaofan Zhou
Affiliations
Lijie Jiang
National-Provincial Joint Engineering Research Center of Electromechanical Product Packaging, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, China
Xingyu Huang
Key Laboratory of Recycling and Eco-Treatment of Waste Biomass of Zhejiang Province, Zhejiang University of Science and Technology, Hangzhou 310023, China
Chaochao Tian
College of Bioresources Chemical and Materials Engineering, Shaanxi University of Science and Technology, Xi’an 710021, China
Yidan Zhong
National-Provincial Joint Engineering Research Center of Electromechanical Product Packaging, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, China
Ming Yan
National-Provincial Joint Engineering Research Center of Electromechanical Product Packaging, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, China
Chen Miao
National-Provincial Joint Engineering Research Center of Electromechanical Product Packaging, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, China
Ting Wu
Institute of Chemical Industry of Forest Products, Chinese Academy of Forestry, Key Lab of Biomass Energy and Material of Jiangsu Province, Nanjing 210042, China
Xiaofan Zhou
National-Provincial Joint Engineering Research Center of Electromechanical Product Packaging, Nanjing Forestry University, Nanjing 210037, China
The currently reported methods for preparing cellulose acetate hydrogels use chemical reagents as cross-linking agents, and the prepared ones are non-porous structured cellulose acetate hydrogels. Nonporous cellulose acetate hydrogels limit the range of applications, such as limiting cell attachment and nutrient delivery in tissue engineering. This research creatively proposed a facile method to prepare cellulose acetate hydrogels with porous structures. Water was added to the cellulose acetate–acetone solution as an anti-solvent to induce the phase separation of the cellulose acetate–acetone solution to obtain a physical gel with a network structure, where the cellulose acetate molecules undergo re-arrangement during the replacement of acetone by water to obtain hydrogels. The SEM and BET test results showed that the hydrogels are relatively porous. The maximum pore size of the cellulose acetate hydrogel is 380 nm, and the specific surface area reaches 62 m2/g. The porosity of the hydrogel is significantly higher than that of the cellulose acetate hydrogel reported in the previous literature. The XRD results show that the nanofibrous morphology of cellulose acetate hydrogels is caused by the deacetylation reaction of cellulose acetate.
