Antioxidant, antibacterial/antifungal nanostructures for medical and food packaging applications

Electrospinning is a very attractive fibers fabrication technique due to the ability to produce nanoscale materials and structures with outstanding properties. As drug delivery systems it offers nanofiber meshes with high surface/volume ratio, high porosity and high surface exposed to the release media. The biologically active substances/drugs can be encapsulated into the individual polymeric nanofibers by coaxial or monoaxial electrospinning or, by another approach by which the biologically active substances can be entrapped and attached as nanoparticles to the nanofiber mesh. As antimicrobial/antioxidant materials for biomedical applications, the electrospun formulations containing silver nanoparticles are presented. As coating materials for food packaging, electrospun nanofibers containing chitosan formulations with antibacterial/antioxidant/antifungal properties are discussed.