Electrospun essential oil-doped chitosan/poly(ε-caprolactone) hybrid nanofibrous mats for antimicrobial food biopackaging exploits

Development of antimicrobial electrospun nanofibrous mats is one of the most recent trends in the field of food biopackaging. Herein, novel antimicrobial fibrous mats consisting of blend electrospun chitosan (CS)/poly(epsilon-caprolactone) (PCL) embedded with oregano essential oil (OEO) were fabricated via electrospinning approach and investigated. FE-SEM manifested that as-spun fibers were well-oriented with uniform diameters along their lengths, and AFM displayed the dense nature of the fibrous mats, with surface roughness in the range of 62.9-84.6 nm. The physical interactions and hydrogen bonding between CS/PCL and OEO were verified by FTIR. This novel hybrid mat demonstrated excellent mechanical strength of 14.0 MPa and achieved good water vapor barrier performance. In vitro release assay also revealed that most of plant essential oil loaded fiber mats was remained (56.4-81.7%) after 96 h, demonstrating its durability. Furthermore, the CS/OEO(5%)/PCL nanofiber mats exhibited distinctive antibacterial activity towards Gram-positive (Staphylococcus aureus, Listeria monocytogenes) and Gram-negative (Salmonella enteritidis, Escherichia coli) bacteria. This study gives insights to design new fiber-based antimicrobial nanomaterials of interest in food packaging exploits.