A facile and green method to prepare chitin based composites with antibacterial activity

The aim of this study was to develop antimicrobial wound dressing materials based on a clinical medicine (silver sulfadiazine, AgSD) and chitin, which is the second most abundant polysaccharide on earth. Chitin has poor antibacterial activity, which limits its application in medical fields such as wound dressings. Therefore, in this study, AgSD was introduced into chitin hydrogel in order to achieve a novel wound dressing material. The chitin and chitin-AgSD composites were characterized by SEM, FTIR and TG analyses. The results showed that AgSD particles are well dispersed on the cell walls of chitin hydrogels. The release behavior of AgSD from chitin-AgSD hydrogels was studied as well. The antibacterial properties of chitin-AgSD hydrogels against Escherichia coli, Staphylococcu aureus and Candida albicans were evaluated by disk diffusion method. The result showed that the antibacterial behavior of chitin hydrogels has been greatly enhanced. Therefore, chitin-AgSD hydrogels demonstrated to be novel functional materials that can be potentially applied in wound dressing applications.