pH-Responsive Hybrid Jute Carbon Dot-Cotton Patch

This work demonstrates the development of a pH-responsive smart drug delivery system. Herein, we fabricated a hybrid cotton patch nanocomposite incorporated with jute carbon dots to carry out the drug release study. Notably, jute was used for the first time as a precursor in synthesizing fluorescent carbon dots and water was used as the dispersion medium. A herbal formulation neem leaf (Azadirachta indica) extract was taken as the model drug to exemplify the release study. It was found that the hybrid jute carbon dot-cotton patch showed two distinct release profiles at pH 5 and 7, where the release shown to be higher at pH 5 than at pH 7. In cases where, due to the growth of pathogenic bacterial infection around the cut/wound region, the pH gets lowered, this enhanced release of the drug from the fabricated patch at pH 5 will be desirable. Mechanistic interpretations are discussed in order to understand the underlying drug release behavior of the cotton patch. Besides, different characterization techniques such as FTIR spectroscopy, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), tensile measurement, and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) were taken to study the physicochemical properties of the patch. The development of such a stimuli-responsive behavior of hybrid cotton patch would pave the way for utilizing systems as smart wound-dressing material using sustainable materials like jute and cotton.