Encapsulation of d-limonene in electrospun PVA nanofibers

ESTEVEZ ARECO, SANTIAGO; CANDAL, ROBERTO; GOYANES, SILVIA; GUZ, LUCAS

Buenos Aires

Simposio; Frontiers in Physical Sciences; 2016

Essential oils are well known for their antioxidant and antimicrobial activity, but theirapplication as active agents is often limited by their volatile nature. One way to control therelease of essential oils is using an encapsulating agent. In this work, d-limonene wasencapsulated in β-cyclodextrin and incorporated to a film, formed by PVA electrospunnanofibers.First, β-cyclodextrin was mixed into an aqueous solution of PVA and then d-limonene wasadded to form an emulsion. The obtained emulsion was electrospun to make a PVA/ β-cyclodextrin/d-limonene film. Following the same steps, films of PVA, PVA/ β-cyclodextrin and PVA/d-limonene were fabricated for comparison.Films were characterized by SEM imaging, X-ray diffractometry and FTIR spectrometry.No significant differences in morphology were observed by SEM imaging. FTIR spectraconfirmed the presence of β-cyclodextrin in the films. X-ray diffraction showed anamorphous peak related to PVA in 2θ≈19° for all samples. Also, two peaks were observedin 2θ≈6° and 2θ≈11° for the PVA/β-cyclodextrin/d-limonene film, attributed to theformation of the inclusion complex β-cyclodextrin/d-limonene.Finally, preliminary studies showed that films containing β-cyclodextrin/d-limonenepresents inhibition growth rates of 38% against Escherichia Coli.