Preparation of Uniformly Sized Chitosan Nanospheres by a Premix Membrane Emulsification Technique

作者：Piping Lv, Wei Wei, Fangling Gong, Yueling Zhang, Huiying Zhao, Jiandu Lei, Lian-Yan Wang, Guanghui Ma · 发表于：Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research · 年份：2009 · DOI：10.1021/ie801758e · 被引用次数：52 · 研究领域：Advanced Drug Delivery Systems、Nanoparticle-Based Drug Delivery、Hydrogels: synthesis, properties, applications

Chitosan nanospheres have great potential in drug controlled release systems, because they show excellent degradability, biocompatibility, and nontoxicity. The particle size control and size distribution of nanospheres are necessary in order to improve reproducibility, bioavailability, and repeatable release behavior. In order to prepare uniformly sized and size-controllable chitosan nanospheres, in this study, a premix membrane emulsification technique was developed on the basis of direct membrane emulsification, and the uniformly sized chitosan naonospheres were successfully prepared by optimizing preparation conditions. The detail preparation process is as follows: The chitosan aqueous solution was used as a dispersed phase, and the mixture of liquid paraffin and petroleum ether containing emulsifier was used as a continuous phase. The coarse emulsions were first prepared by low-speed stator homogenization and then poured into the premix reservoir. Nanodroplets were achieved by extruding the coarse emulsions through the SPG (Shirasu porous glass) membrane with a high pressure. The nanodroplets were further cross-linked to obtain chitosan nanospheres. In this process, several factors played key roles in obtaining chitosan nanoparticles with narrow size distribution, including the amounts of emulsifier in oil phase, the composition of oil phase, the concentration of chitosan, the ratio of water to oil phase, the transmembrane pressure and number of passes, and so on. The res...