Preparation and characterization of solvent-free fluids reinforced and plasticized polylactic acid fibrous membrane

In this paper, the electronspun Polylactic acid (PLA)/TiO2 nanofluids (nfs) fibrous membrane with good toughness, hydrophilicity and antibacterial activities are fabricated by taking full advantages of solvent-free TiO2 nfs with amphiphilicity and ionic conductivity. The resulting PLA/TiO2 nfs fibrous membrane exhibits excellent mechanical performance with a tensile strength and elongation at break of 3.68 MPa and 97.32 MPa at 5 wt% loading, respectively, which is 4 and 8 times higher than that of pure PLA, respectively. Additionally, TiO2 nfs can migrate onto the surface of PLA fibers during electrospun process, which significantly enhanced hydrophilicity, antistatic property, moisture sorption capacity and wicking properties of PLA fabrics. Meanwhile, the membrane also showed ultrafast water filtration of 3500 L m−2 h−1 driven by gravity force, which is 10–12 times higher than that of commercial ultrafiltration membrane. After ion-exchange reaction with salt solution, excellent antibacterial activity (against E. coli and S. aureus was 95% and 99.9%, respectively) and separation efficiency (above 90% on E. coli) of the obtained fabrics are also achieved. Overall, organic nfs are an idea candidate for fabricating hydrophilic PLA based biodegradable fabric that can be applied in contaminated water treatment, antibacterial textiles and biodegradable absorption materials.