Part of the book: Advances in Nanocomposites
Part of the book: Nanomaterials
Zein produced from maize is a hydrophobic protein, which holds great potential for a number of industrial applications, for example, food packaging, pharmaceutical, cosmetic, and biomedical industry. Sorghum, known as important cereal crop worldwide, is a good source of various phytochemicals such as tannins, phenolic acids, anthocyanins, phytosterols, and policosanols, and these phytochemicals have great impact on human health. Poria cocos, a well‐known traditional East‐Asian medicinal plant, is found around the roots of pine trees in Korea and China. As a rapid and efficient process, electrospinning has drawn huge interest among scientists to produce nanostructured polymer materials with excellent properties. In this work, we studied the influence of co‐solvent ratio and concentration of zein/medicinal plant extract on the morphologies of nanostructured zein/medicinal plant extract nanomaterials prepared by electrospinning technique from ethanol/water solution. The zein/medicinal extract nanofibers were characterized by field‐emission scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, thermogravimetric analysis, and differential scanning calorimetric technique. And we were to incorporate medicinal plant resources into the electro‐spun zein nanofibers by electrospinning technique to investigate the effect of medicinal extract on the morphologies, antibacterial, antioxidant, and other properties. Zein/medicinal plant extract might have a practical use as a new preservative for cosmeceutical applications.
Part of the book: Nanofiber Research
In the conventional electrospinning method, fibers are randomly deposited and form nonwoven structures; however, highly aligned micro- or nanofiber and its yarn may only be applicable for the fields, including composites, clothing, textiles, and microelectronics. The elementary principle to obtain uniaxially arranged nanofiber array is to regulate the electric field distribution by using assistant electrode or modified collecting device. The potential applications of conventional electrospun poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) fiber in the preparation of ultrafine separation filters, biodegradable mats, etc., have been described by many researchers. Highly aligned PVA nanofibers were prepared using a modified electrospinning process at the optimum conditions, and a twister added modified electrospinning apparatus was used to prepare twisted nanofiber yarn. The diameter and arrangement of the electrospun PVA nanofibers were characterized using FE-SEM. To study the effect of applied voltage and rotational velocity on the alignment rate of the nanofibers, different voltages and rotational velocity were applied during modified electrospinning, keeping other parameters unchanged. To measure the melting temperature and crystallinity of aligned nanofibers, differential scanning calorimetry and X-ray diffraction measurement were performed, respectively. The fabricated highly aligned nanofiber and its yarn might have a practical use of devices for microelectronics.
Part of the book: Electrospinning