Preparation of antimicrobial poly(vinyl alcohol) nanofibers containing silver nanoparticles

POLY 497

Wen-Ji Jin, moonhee820407@hanmail.net, Hyun Jeong Jeon, polygirl@inhaian.net, Eun Hwan Jeong, clioman@nate.com, Ji Hye Hong, jhhong@inhaian.net, and Ji Ho Youk, youk@inha.ac.kr. Department of Advanced Fiber Engineering, Inha University, 253 Yonghyun-dong, Nam-gu, Incheon, 402-751, South Korea
The PVA nanofibers containing Ag nanoparticles were directly electrospun from 12 wt% PVA solutions containing Ag nanoparticles for use in wound dressing applications. The PVA solutions were prepared by refluxing PVA/AgNO3 aqueous solutions. The PVA well stabilized the resulting Ag nanoparticles during the electrospinning process. The average diameters of the PVA nanofibers electrospun with 0, 0.5, 1, and 2 wt% AgNO3 were 200, 170, 160, and 120 nm, respectively. The average diameters of the Ag nanoparticles were less than 6 nm and their size distributions were very narrow. It was found that thermal properties of PVA nanofibers could be improved by introducing small amounts of Ag nanoparticles.