Preparation of wet-spun polysaccharide fibers from Chinese medicinal Bletilla striata

In order to improve the biomedical property of Bletilla striata polysaccharide (BSP), this study presents a new method of BSP fiber preparation and its mechanical properties were preliminarily tested. BSP with excellent biocompatibility was extracted from a traditional Chinese herb, B. striata, by using an immersion precipitation phase-inversion approach. BSP fibers were prepared by wet spinning using ethanol as the coagulant at room temperature. The morphology of BSP fibers was observed by scanning electron microcopy (SEM), and it has been found that the shape of the fibers was flat. The formation of the flat shape contributed to the slow exchange rate between the solvent and the nonsolvent. The stress at break, strain at break, initial modulus and energy at break point of the BSP fibers increased with increasing BSP concentration in the spinning solutions. The excellent spinnability, mechanical property and biocompatibility enable the BSP fibers to be an ideal material in the potential applications such as tissue engineering scaffold and wound dressing.