earticle

영어

BC presents exciting applications in biomedical fields, such as wound dressing materials, artificial skin, vascular grafts, scaffolds for tissue engineering, and artificial blood vessels. The application of BC as a wound dressing material principally depends on its water holding capacity (WHC) and water release rate (WRR), which in turn are related to the pore size, and surface area of BC. In the present study, the relationship of pore size and surface area to the WHC and WRR of BC were investigated. Pure BC was pre-modified by the addition of various concentrations of a single sugar α-linked glucuronic acid-based oligosaccharide (SSGO) to the culture media and post modified by treating BC sheets with chitosan (Ch) and montmorillonite (MMT) solutions. The morphological characteristics of the modified BC samples were studied with FE-SEM while their pore size, pore volume, and surface area were determined through BET analysis. The variations in WHC and WRR of BC samples were correlated to the changes in various parameters after structural modifications. WHC and WRR increased with pore volume and pore size in pre- modified BC samples. In post-modified BC, WHC, and WRR were dependent on the nature and arrangement of the composite materials on the surface and in the matrix of the BC sheets.