Summary
Essential oils are effective natural antibacterials and have been incorporated into electrospun fibres many times over, yielding materials described as antibacterial, anti-inflammatory or antioxidant. What has received far less attention is how the oil changes the polymer. This study examines how loading poly(lactic acid) fibres with essential oils affects the properties of the material itself - crystallinity, thermal behaviour, mechanics - which determines whether the fibre still performs as a scaffold once the active agent is inside it.
Authors & Affiliations
Linari Electrospinning Systems
Linari electrospinning system with plate collector
The fibres were produced on a Linari Engineering S.r.l. system (Pisa, Italy) with the ground electrode connected to an aluminium collector plate - the static configuration used when fibre orientation is not the variable under study. See our range of systems.