由蟲狀微胞溶液製備卵磷脂/膽鹽靜電紡絲纖維

Abstract

電紡抽絲為製備連續性超細纖維的一種多樣化方法。電紡纖維的優點十分多，如：具有高表面積對體積比、可調整的孔隙度和易於表面功能化的特點，而電紡纖維普遍是從含有糾纏的高分子鏈之高分子溶液中製備而來。在這篇論文中，我們不以高分子來製備電紡纖維，我們使用電紡抽絲技術製備由卵磷脂與膽鹽組成的纖維，而卵磷脂和膽鹽皆為自然的小分子生物介面活性劑。卵磷脂為構成細胞膜的主要成分，膽鹽則是肝所合成的面向型雙親性小分子並且參與生理消化作用。 一般來說，小分子無法在溶液中展現出糾纏的特性，然而先前的研究已發現卵磷脂和膽鹽能在特定莫爾比例下於低極性有機溶劑中形成蟲狀微胞。類似於高分子鏈，蟲狀微胞為柔軟的鏈且長度夠長可互相糾纏，致使溶液有黏彈性，給予小分子能被電紡抽絲的可能性。藉由小分子自組裝，我們成功將卵磷脂與膽鹽在四氫呋喃與環己烷和四氫呋喃混合之共溶劑中形成的蟲狀微胞溶液，電紡出卵磷脂與膽鹽混合的纖維。我們有系統地研究所需的溶劑性質與溶液的濃度、黏度、導電度，並優化電紡參數。卵磷脂與膽鹽混合的纖維是完全生物可相容的，十分有潛力應用於生物應用方面。

The electrospinning technique is a versatile method for the fabrication of continuous ultrafine fibers. There are many advantages of electrospun fibers, such as high surface area to volume ratio, adjustable porosity, and varying functionality on fiber surface. Electrospun fibers are generally fabricated from polymer solutions with entangled polymer chains. In this work, instead of polymer, we used the electrospinning technique to fabricate fibers composed of lecithin and bile salts, which are naturally occurring small biosurfactants. Lecithin is the main component of the cell membrane and bile salts are facial amphiphiles that involve in digestion process. In general, small molecules are unable to entangle in solutions. However, it has been reported that lecithin/bile salt mixtures can form wormlike-micelles in specific conditions in low polar organic solvents. Similar to polymer chains, the wormlike micelles are flexible chains that can be sufficiently long to entangle one another and impart viscoelasticity to solutions, which provides the opportunity for small molecules to be electrospun into fibers. By the strategy of molecular self-assembly, we successfully obtained lecithin/bile salt fibers electrospun from the solutions of lecithin/bile salt wormlike micelles in THF or cyclohexane/THF cosolvents. We systematically studied the required solvent quality, concentration, viscosity, and conductivity of the solutions and optimized the electrospinning conditions. The lecithin/bile salt fibers are fully biocompatible and could be potential for biomedical applications.