Synthesis of Hollow PVP/Ag Nanoparticle Composite Fibers via Electrospinning under a Dense CO2 Environment

Xin Hu; Jiayang He; Li Zhu; Siti Machmudah; Wahyudiono; Hideki Kanda; Motonobu Goto

doi:10.3390/polym14010089

Synthesis of Hollow PVP/Ag Nanoparticle Composite Fibers via Electrospinning under a Dense CO₂ Environment

Polymers (Basel). 2021 Dec 27;14(1):89. doi: 10.3390/polym14010089.

Authors

Xin Hu¹, Jiayang He¹, Li Zhu¹, Siti Machmudah², Wahyudiono¹, Hideki Kanda¹, Motonobu Goto¹

Affiliations

¹ Department of Materials Process Engineering, Nagoya University, Furo-cho, Chikusa-ku, Nagoya 464-8603, Japan.
² Department of Chemical Engineering, Institut Teknologi Sepuluh Nopember, Surabaya 60111, Indonesia.

Abstract

Polyvinylpyrrolidone (PVP) is used in a wide variety of applications because of its unique chemical and physical features, including its biocompatibility and low toxicity. In this study, hollow PVP/silver nanoparticle (PVP/Ag NP) composite fibers were synthesized. Stable, spherical Ag NPs, with an average size of 14.4 nm, were produced through a facile sonochemical reduction method. A small amount of starch as a potent reducing and stabilizing agent was used during the reduction of Ag ions to Ag NPs. The fabricated Ag NPs were then added to a 10 wt% PVP-dichloromethane (DCM) solution, which was utilized as an electrospinning feed solution under a dense carbon dioxide (CO₂) environment at 313 K and 5 MPa and an applied voltage of 15 kV. The dense CO₂ enabled rapid extraction of DCM from the PVP-Ag NPs-DCM solution, which was then dissolved into PVP/Ag NPs, resulting in a hollow structure. Scanning electron microscopy, Fourier-transform infrared (FT-iR) spectroscopy, X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) analyses, and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), were used to characterize the electrospinning products.

Keywords: dense CO2; electrospinning; hollow fibers; silver nanoparticles; ultrasonic.