Seaweed-Derived Electrospun Nanofibrous Membranes for Ultrahigh Protein Adsorption

Construction of simple and efficient protein adsorption materials is extremely vital to satisfy the requirements of highly purified proteins in biopharmaceutical and biotechnological industries, yet remains challenging. Herein, a cost-effective strategy to develop seaweed-derived nanofibrous membranes (NFM) for ultrahigh protein adsorption is reported. Synergistic regulation by cosolvent of ethanol, nonionic surfactants of Triton X-100, and polyethylene oxide (PEO5000k) is employed to realize electrospinning of seaweed-derived sodium alginate (SA) nanofibers with higher alginate content of 98 wt% to date, and following water washing easily generates SA nanofibrous membranes (SA-NFM) with excellent morphology. Benefiting from the nanoscale merit of large specific surface area and tortuously porous microstructure, SA-NFM exhibit a high actual capacity of 1235 mg g(-1) toward lysozyme, which far exceeds maximum value for the reported 2D membrane materials (710 mg g(-1)) and is about 20 times that of commercial membranes adsorbents (51 mg g(-1)). Higher dynamic capacity of 805 mg g(-1) (gravity driven) is also realized to meet the demand of practical application. The SA-NFM also possess outstanding reversibility and unique selectivity toward specific proteins. Herein, SA-NFM represent a perfect candidate for next-generation protein absorbents for fast and efficient bioseparation.