Needleless Electrospinning of Carboxymethyl Cellulose

Carboxymethylcellulose (CMC) belongs to the biopolymers with interesting intrinsic physical and chemical properties which can be used for diverse medical, biotechnological and other applications. CMC has, e.g., been used for drug delivery of diclofenac or lidocaine. Blended with poly(vinyl alcohol), sodium carboxymethylcellulose has shown pH-responsive swelling behavior. CMC acetate butyrate, on the other hand, showed increased hydrophobicity. Although CMC is known to be electrospinnable with poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG), experiments to create such nanofiber mats are scarce. The chapter thus gives an overview of recent developments in electrospinning carboxymethylcellulose nanofiber mats and reports on the latest results of our group in needleless electrospinning CMC/PEG nanofibers as well as tests of CMC blended with other (bio)polymers. It shows that while electrospinning CMC in combination with PEG as a spinning agent can result in relatively homogeneous mats of fine nanofibers, blends of CMC with other (bio)polymers do not create spinnable polymer solutions, but partly at least solutions for electrospraying. In both cases, however, the polymer blend ratios are crucial and must be tailored carefully to enable electrospinning or electrospraying, respectively. Generally, it can be concluded that CMC does not only belong to the not electrospinnable polymers, but even prohibits electrospinning of usually spinnable polymers already for small amounts of carboxymethylcellulose.