In situ controllable fabrication of porous bacterial cellulose

Abstract In an attempt to obtain bacterial cellulose (BC) with controllable pores, Ca-alginate particles were introduced into BC fermentation medium. Ca-alginate particles with different diameters were prepared through electrostatic spinning and pulverization. After removing the particles, a continuous and homogeneous network of pores with diameters around 5 μm, 20 μm, and 400 μm were presented inside BC hydrogel. Compared to native BC, the crystallinity, the surface area and water holding capacity (WHC) were all increased when the pore sizes around 5 μm, 20 μm. However, the porous BC with diameters around 400 μm showed poor performance in WHC and mechanical strength. This novel approach described in this paper introduced a new approach for creating controllable porous BC with user-defined control over the physical dimensions of the network, and slightly changed its structure.