Polyvinyl Alcohol/Soursop Leaves Extract Composite Nanofibers Synthesized Using Electrospinning Technique and their Potential as Antibacterial Wound Dressing

Abstract

The ethanolic extract of soursop leaves (SLE) has been proven to have antibacterial activity and can be used to cure some bacterial diseases caused by Staphylococcus aureus, Eschercia coli, Enterobacter aerogenes and it also has the ability to heal skin infections. In this study, SLE incorporated with polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as matrix polymer produced fibers by electrospinning process. Electrospinning is one of the techniques used in producing fibers up to nano size and applicable used as wound dressing. Wound dressing with fiber appearance and contained antibacterial agent was very important concerned in protection utterly bacterial and and the ability to synthesize protein better in the wound healing process. Composite fiber PVA/SLE synthesised from PVA solution and added SLE with 8-14% weight ratio into solution. This study showed: (1) successfully producing electrospun PVA/SLE composite fiber with average fiber diameter 121-137 nm, (2) process parameter for solution PVA/SLE spinned with voltage 8 kV, flow rate 0.2 mL/h and distance from collector to injection was 12 cm and from the in vitro test of antibacterial activity, the composite nanofibers were confirmed to be able to halt the growth of Staphylococcus aureus implying that the composite nanofibers could be applied as a good wound dressing material.