Green Continuous Electrospinning to Fabricate Multiscale Chitosan Nanofibers by Regulating of Polyvinyl Alcohol for Mask Filter Applications

Air pollution has inflicted serious harm to the environment, upon which humanity relies for its survival. Fully biodegradable chitosan (CS) nanofibers hold promising prospects for mitigating the escalating challenges of both air pollution and the emergence of infectious diseases. However, information about the preparation of ultrafine chitosan nanofibers is limited. Herein, we propose a CS/PVA (polyvinyl alcohol) nanofiber membrane mask material with a multiscale structure. The nanofiber membrane mask material was prepared through electrospining by modulating different spinning units using green and nonpolluting PVA as the cospinning agent and fully biodegradable CS as the spinning raw material. The average diameter of the prepared fibers was 72 ± 15 nm when the CS/PVA spinning ratio was 5:5 and 256 ± 25 nm when the CS/PVA spinning ratio was 2:8. When the ratio of coarse to fine fiber spinning units was 1:1, the nanofiber membrane filter cartridge had excellent filtration performance, with a filtration efficiency of 99.924%, a filtration resistance of 32 Pa, and a quality factor of 0.22444 Pa–1. The nanofiber membrane exhibited excellent bacteriostatic properties against both Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus. Moreover, the CS/PVA nanofiber membrane mask cartridge material is fully degradable and has no harmful environmental effects. Therefore, the findings of this study provide a novel method for the preparation of innovative mask filtration materials.