Development of gelatin/chitosan membranes with controlled microstructure by electrospinning

Electrospun membranes obtained through electrospinning are very promising since they exhibit a high porosity and surface area. The present study proposes the use of gelatin (GL) made from fish by-products in combination with a polycationic polysaccharide (chitosan, CH) and a water-soluble polymer (polyethylene oxide, PEO) to obtain unitary, binary or even ternary nanofibrous membranes which would be suitable in different applications, such as biomaterials or filtration industry. This work aims to correlate the microstructure of final ternary membranes (GL–CH–PEO) and the properties of the solutions by evaluating their viscosity obtained through rheological characterization, as well as their conductivity and density, which are key parameters to obtain a suitable electrospinning processing technique. The results indicate that membranes with a fairly homogeneous distribution of fibers can be obtained using either biopolymer/PEO binary solutions (i.e., 00/85/30 or 05/00/35 systems) or even ternary solutions (05/85/35 or 05/85/35) with diameters shorter than 200 nm. In this sense, physicochemical characterization of the polymer/biopolymer solutions used for electrospinning processing technique is essential for the understanding of this technique.