Preparation, Characterization, and Release Study of Nanosilica/Chitosan Composite Films

The development of film materials that can control the release of drugs is needed to create a smart drug delivery system. This paper reports the properties and kinetic studies of film models made of chitosan and nanosilica. Nanosilica was directly incorporated into the chitosan solution to modify and enhance the properties of the composites as potential drug carriers. Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy results acknowledge the successful fabrication of chitosan/nanosilica composite films. Wettability tests showed that the inclusion of nanosilica could make the film more hydrophilic by incorporating up to 5 wt%. The effective diffusion coefficients obtained by mathematical modeling were in the range of 10.6 cm(2)/min. Based on the kinetic studies, the power-law model is the most suitable model to explain the mechanism of drug released from composite films with kK values ranging from 0.3552 to 0.4279, the value of n in the range of 0.3103 to 0.3955, and the value of R-2 in the range of 0.9008 to 0.9411. The overall result concludes that these chitosan/nanosilica composite films have great potential to be used as materials for drug carriers.