l‐ carvone‐loaded nanofibrous membrane as a fragrance delivery system: fabrication, characterization and in vitro study

The present work reports the fabrication of a fragrance delivery system using nanofibres by an electrospinning method. Fragrant oils are volatile essential oils that easily undergo degradation and evaporation. Nanostructured fibres of poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) and poly(ε‐caprolactone) (PCL) were prepared by an electrospinning process. In this study, l‐carvone was used as a model fragrant oil, and it can be used as an air‐freshening agent. l‐carvone (5 wt%) loaded PVA solution (10 wt%) (C‐PVA) and PCL solution (13 wt%) (C‐PCL) were electrospun into nanofibres. The scanning electron microscopy (SEM) images showed that the incorporation of essential oil l‐carvone in PVA and PCL solution caused the resulting as‐spun fibre to be non‐uniform, and the average diameter was found to increase from 100–190 nm to 230–400 nm for the PVA mat and from 300–500 nm to 390–800 nm for the PCL mat. The functional group, crystallinity and thermal stability of prepared electrospun nanofibres were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X‐ray diffraction (XRD), thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and differential scanning calorimeter (DSC) measurements. The degree of crystallinity of electrospun PVA, C‐PVA, PCL and C‐PCL was found to be 10.46%, 7.4%, 56.16% and 53.41% respectively. The in vitro release of l‐carvone from the prepared electrospun fibres was conducted at 30 ± 0.2°C for 24 h by both the encapsulation and imbibition methods. The maximum release of l‐carvone (5 wt%) was observed to be 61% and 64.1% from PVA nanofibres and 36% and 48.4% from PCL nanofibres by the encapsulation and imbibition methods respectively. These results show the potential of the prepared electrospun l‐carvone‐loaded PVA and PCL nanofibrous membrane in the fragrance delivery system. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.