Development of antimicrobi al hybrid materials from polylactic acid and nano-silver coated chitosan

Abstract

This work aims to prepare chitosan (CS) coated with nano-silver as a filler for polylactic acid (PLA) to develop novel hybrid materials with antimicrobial property. Nano-silver coated chitosan with different silver contents was prepared by reduction of silver nitrate using benzoxazine as a reducing agent. The obtained nanosilver-coated chitosan exhibited the antimicrobial property against S. aureus, B. subtilis, M. luteus, E. coli, P. aeruginosa and C. albicans. Among all the prepared chitosan coated with nanosilver (CS-Ag), 10CS-Ag (the silver content of 8.4% by weight from thermogravimetric analysis) showed the best antimicrobial activity. Therefore, 10CS-Ag was selected to be a filler for making compound pellets with polylactic acid (PLA). According to melt flow index (MFI) study of CSAg-PLA compounding, the hybrid materials between CSAg and PLA were prepared by compression molding. The hybrid materials with 3% by weight of 10CS-Ag in PLA matrix (3CSAg-PLA) revealed the antibacterial property of 99.99% inhibition. This work showed the possibility of developing the hybrid materials between CSAg and PLA as antimicrobial products.