LBL fabricated biopolymer-layered silicate based nanofibrous mats and their cell compatibility studies

N-(2-hydroxyl) propyl-3-trimethyl ammonium chitosan chloride (HTCC) was synthesized from chitosan (CS). Organic rectorite (OREC) added into cellulose acetate (CA) was used to fabricate electrospun nanofibrous mats with improved thermal properties, as a result of depositing multilayers of the positively charged HTCC-OREC composites and the negatively charged sodium alginate (ALG) via layer-by-layer (LBL) technique. The morphology was affected by the number of deposition bilayers and the component of the outmost layer. Observed from the field emission scanning electron microscopy (FE-SEM) images, the LBL structured nanofibrous mats had much larger fiber sizes than CA-OREC nanofibrous mats. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) and X-ray diffraction (XRD) results further confirmed that HTCC-OREC was assembled on nanofibrous mats. Additionally, cell experiments and MTT results demonstrated that OREC had little effect on the cytotoxicity of LBL template, but obviously affected both the cytotoxicity and the cell compatibility of LBL structured mats when OREC was in the deposition films. (C) 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.