In Vitro Hyperthermia Evaluation of Electrospun Polymer Composite Fibers Loaded with Reduced Graphene Oxide

Electrospun meshes (EM) composed of natural and synthetic polymers with randomly or aligned fibers orientations containing 0.5% or 1% of thermally reduced graphene oxide (TrGO) were prepared by electrospinning (ES), and their hyperthermia properties were evaluated. EM loaded with and without TrGO were irradiated using near infrared radiation (NIR) at 808 nm by varying the distance and electric potential recorded at 30 s. Morphological, spectroscopic, and thermal aspects of EM samples were analyzed by using SEM-EDS, Raman and X-ray photoelectron (XPS) spectroscopies, X-ray diffraction (XRD), and NIR radiation response. We found that the composite EM made of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA), natural rubber (NR), and arabic gum (AG) containing TrGO showed improved hyperthermia properties compared to EM without TrGO, reaching an average temperature range of 42–52 °C. We also found that the distribution of TrGO in the EM depends on the orientation of the fibers. These results allow infering that EM loaded with TrGO as a NIR-active thermal inducer could be an excellent candidate for hyperthermia applications in photothermal therapy.

Electrospinning of polyvinyl alcohol into crosslinked nanofibers: An approach to fabricate functional adsorbent for heavy metals

Electrospun nanofibers have a wide range of applications due to their unique miniature size and accompanying ultra-high specific surface area. Polyvinyl alcohol(PVA) is a kind of hydrophilic materials, and hence its nanofiber morphology prepared by electrospinning disappeared after solution immersing. In the present work, crosslinked PVA nanofibers were prepared by electrospinning and then employing glutaraldehyde vapor crosslinking to improve their water resistance and mechanical properties. As an application, these nanofibers were used to adsorb Cu²⁺ and Pb²⁺ according to varying crosslinking time and different concentrations of ionic solution. It was observed the crosslinked PVA nanofiber films maintained good fiber morphology after adsorption, while the nanofiber morphology of uncrosslinked samples was lost. The stability of the crosslinked nanofiber films in water was improved, the adsorption equilibrium time of Pb²⁺ decreased from 30 h to 10 h while the equilibrium adsorption time of Cu²⁺ decreased from 15 h to 5 h, and the tensile strength of the nanofiber films with crosslinking time of 20 h was 7.99 MPa, which was 240% higher than that of the nanofiber with crosslinking time of 1 h, indicating higher efficiency.