Synthesis and characterization of β-cylodextrin/alginate aerogel dried by ambient drying: article

Aerogel is an attractive candidate for the drug delivery system in order to increase dissolved compounds solubility because of its excellent features with large surface area and high pore volume. These properties can only be obtained when the materials are dried by supercritical CO₂ (SCCO₂) to remove liquids present in solid pores. However, this method is so power-intensive and dangerous that it is difficult to practice and sell. Therefore it is very important to synthesize aerogels at a reasonable cost using an ambient pressure drying technique. Even though aerogels have a comparatively elevated compression strength, the structural power of aerogels is not great, because it is very brittle owing to its very small tensile strength and because of the quantity of water in its framework of 99%, they break readily when the stress and heavy load pressure applied to it. The aim of this work were to determine the suitable ratio for the formation of aerogel and to study the morphology and properties of β-cyclodextrin (β-CD)/alginate aerogel. Percentage of shrinkage level for aerogel decrease as the amount of Β-cyclodextrin increase. β-CD mixed with alginate to form aerogels enhanced the thermal stability and the rate of decomposition. The application of β-cyclodextrin results in more stable aerogel decomposition about 270 to 290⁰C for each sample except B1 and B2. The surface area of aerogel increase when β-CD introduced to sodium alginate at first but the surface area suddenly decrease when the amount of β-CD increase which also give a results to low porous structure of aerogel. Lastly, the pore volume of each sample increase as the amount of β-CD increase.