Rice Straw Extracted Cellulose Biocompatible Nanofiber

This article focuses on the electrospinning of nanofibers from rice straw as a renewable, cheap natural resource. To facilitate the formation of cellulose nanofiber, PVA was utilized as a secondary plasticizing polymer. The polymer solution contained 75% w/w cellulose and 25% w/w PVA using water/formic acid solvent resulting in 8% w/w solid content was successfully prepared as spinning solution. According to SEM images, temperature and voltage have significant impact in producing continuous cellulose nanofibers without beads. A microscopic observation reveals the formation of nanofiber with an average diameter of 177 ± 25 nm. This narrow diameter distribution is a direct outcome of temperature, voltage, volumetric flow rate and tip to collector distance adjustment respectively on 60, 25 kv, 1 µl/hr and 10 cm. The biocompatibility tests using human skin fibroblast cell culture demonstrate the nontoxicity of cellulose nanofiber scaffold compared to a control sample.