Development and characterization of tripolymeric and bipolymeric composite films using glyoxal as a potent crosslinker for biomedical application.

For various biomedical applications, biopolymeric films are often crosslinked using chemical crosslinker such as glutaraldehyde, which is considered as a toxic chemical. In this report, we have prepared and characterized biopolymeric films using different combinations of chitosan, CMC, alginate and PVA using glyoxal as the crosslinker. The prepared films were subjected to various physico-chemical and mechanical characterizations such as swelling index, surface pH, surface morphology analysis using SEM, interact ion study using XRD, flexibility study using tensile testing and hardness testing. Glyoxal crosslinking resulted in variation of physico-chemical and mechanical alteration of the chitosan-PVA films while it had the negligible effect on the CAP film. Further, the hardness of the films demonstrated a decrease in value in the crosslinked films as compared to non-crosslinked films. We have interpreted that glyoxal is a potential crosslinker for chitosan-based composite polymers while in this case, it did not show any significant effect on CMC and alginate based composite structures. Therefore, using this type of films would be the cheap, safe and new alternative in drug delivery and other biomedical applications.