New Surface Modification of Hydrophilic Polyvinyl Alcohol via Predrying and Electrospinning of Hydrophobic Polycaprolactone Nanofibers

Abstract

Despite the excellent oxygen barrier and biodegradability of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), its poor physical properties owing to its inherent hydrophilicity limit its application. In this paper, we report a novel surface modification technique for PVA films, involving the control of the predrying conditions (i.e., amount of residual solvent) of the coated PVA film and adjusting the electrospinning process of hydrophobic polycaprolactone (PCL) nanofibers onto the PVA films. The residual solvent of the coated PVA film was varied by changing the predrying time. A shorter predrying time increased the residual solvent content significantly (p p 2·day. Therefore, our newly developed technique is cost-effective for modifying the surface and physical properties of hydrophilic polymers, broadening their industrial applications.

Keywords

• predrying
• polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)
• polycaprolactone (PCL)
• electrospinning
• surface modification