Li Boxuan, Wang Juan, Moustafa Mahmoud E, Yang Hu
Department of Chemical and Life Science Engineering, Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, Virginia 23219, United States.
Tianjin Key Laboratory of Biomedical Materials, Institute of Biomedical Engineering, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences & Peking Union Medical College, Tianjin 300192, PR China.
ACS Biomater Sci Eng. 2019 Dec 9;5(12):6355-6360. doi: 10.1021/acsbiomaterials.9b00695. Epub 2019 Nov 13.
Chitosan is an important and abundant natural-based polymer, and it has broad applications. However, dissolving chitosan in plain water is a challenge, which mostly limits the biomedical applications of chitosan materials. Herein, we report an ecofriendly dissolution method to obtain a plain water-based chitosan solution for the first time. In this method, dissolving chitosan in ionic liquid followed by overnight freezing at -20 °C and subsequent solvent exchange with plain water at room temperature results in a stable chitosan dispersion in water with nanosize, namely water-based, chitosan pseudosolution. The overall process is ecofriendly. This new method augments the quality and processability of chitosan solutions used in manufacturing and bioprocessing and promotes the biomedical applications of chitosan-based products.
壳聚糖是一种重要且丰富的天然聚合物，具有广泛的应用。然而，将壳聚糖溶解于纯水是一项挑战，这在很大程度上限制了壳聚糖材料的生物医学应用。在此，我们首次报道了一种环保的溶解方法，以获得基于纯水的壳聚糖溶液。在该方法中，将壳聚糖溶解于离子液体中，随后在-20°C下冷冻过夜，并在室温下与纯水进行后续的溶剂交换，从而得到纳米尺寸的、稳定的壳聚糖水分散体，即水基壳聚糖假溶液。整个过程是环保的。这种新方法提高了用于制造和生物加工的壳聚糖溶液的质量和可加工性，并促进了基于壳聚糖产品的生物医学应用。
