Photocatalytic property and pH-response behavior of modified ZnO electrospun nanofibers grafted with poly(methyl methacrylate)

ZnO nanomaterials have been widely studied in medical and biological fields owing to their better biocompatibility, pH-responsibility and higher photocatalytic ability as drug carriers and disease therapy agent. However, the unstability of ZnO nanomaterials within aqueous solution restricts the applications of it to some extent. In this work, ZnO nanofibers with relative higher porosity were fabricated by electrospinning to improve the load capacity as carriers, and then were modified by hydrophobic poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) through graft polymerization on the surface to improve their stability in aqueous solution. Observations on the morphologies of the nanofibers by SEM showed that the surface modification of PMMA well enhanced the water-stability of ZnO nanofibers. Moreover, the photocatalytic degradation of Rhodamine B was investigated, and pH sensitive release behaviors were studied in details under different pH values, by taking Nifedipine as drug model. The results indicated that PMMA modified ZnO nanofibers showed obvious photocatalytic performances and maintained relative excellent pH-response properties. These findings all suggested that the modified ZnO nanofibers might be one kind of excellent material as medical carrier or therapy agents.