Electrospinning of poly(ethylene-co-vinyl alcohol) nanofibres encapsulated with Ag nanoparticles for skin wound healing

Copyright © 2011 Chao Xu et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Skin wound healing is an urgent problem in clinics and military activities. Although significant advances have been made in its treatment, there are several challenges associated with traditional methods, for example, limited donor skin tissue for transplantation and inflammation during long-term healing time. To address these challenges, in this study we present a method to fabricate Poly(ethylene-co-vinyl alcohol) (EVOH) nanofibres encapsulated with Ag nanoparticle using electrospinning technique. The fibres were fabricated with controlled diameters (59nm-3m) by regulating three main parameters, that is, EVOH solution concentration, the electric voltage, and the distance between the injection needle tip (high-voltage point) and the fibre collector. Ag was added to the nanofibres to offer long-term anti-inflammation effect by slow release of Ag nanoparticles through gradual degradation of EVOH nanofibre. The method developed here could lead to new dressing materials for treatment of skin wounds. © 2011 Chao Xu et al.The work was partially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (nos. 10825210, 10872157, and 31050110125) and the National 111 Project of China (no. B06024)

Discontinuous resistance change and domain wall scattering in patterned NiFe wires with a nanoconstriction

A nonlinear current-voltage (I-V) characteristic was observed in patterned NiFe wires with a central "bow-tie" point contact constriction. By passing a dc current through the wire, a sharp resistance drop was obtained for current densities in the range of 1.1-1.4 x 10(7) A/cm(2). This is attributed to current-induced domain wall drag, resulting in displacement of a domain wall away from the constriction. A maximum current-induced resistance change of 0.079% was obtained for a 100-nm constriction, which is comparable with the magnetoresistance due to domain wall scattering in NiFe