Preparation and Application Possibility of Sodium Alginate/Chitosan Polyelectrolyte Membrane

Abstract

As two excellent natural polymers, sodium alginate has excellent biocompatibility and chitosan has good chemical stability and fine bio-availability. They are eco-friendly and easily absorbed by human body. For this reason alginate and chitosan have been widely used in daily life and production, and some efforts were made to improve their application. In this paper a kind of polyelectrolyte membrane made from these two raw materials was prepared
and its properties and possible application were studied. The results showed that the sodium alginate/chitosan (SA/CS) polyelectrolyte membrane is sensitive to pH and it hardly has swelling ability in acidic and alkaline solutions but swells easily in phosphate buffer saline (PBS) solution. Meanwhile, the SA/CS membrane has a high rate of water absorption and retention showing that it has a wonderful hydrophobicity and biocompatibility. The drug loading experiment showed than this SA/CS membrane has a smooth release rate of drug like
ciprofloxacin hydrochloride indicating that it can be used as a drug carrier material and has a wide application prospect in biomedical material.