Preparation and Application Performance of Perylene-Labeled Fluorescent Chitosan Electrospun Anti-Counterfeiting Nanofibers

As an important high-tech anti-counterfeiting material, fluorescent fiber has attracted great interest from researchers in the textile field. In order to endow chitosan (CS) with good fluorescence for the preparation of anti-counterfeiting fibers, various amounts of fluorescent molecules—perylene tetracarboxylic acid (PTCA)–were used to label CS to prepare a series of CS-perylene with different degrees of labeling (DL). Then, nanofiber membranes were produced by electrospinning using fluorescent CS/PVA blend spinning solutions. The effects of the DL on application performance of the CS-perylene were studied. It was found that labeling the appropriate amount of perylene unit onto CS was an effective way to endow the CS with good fluorescence properties. With the increase in the DL of the CS-perylene, its fluorescence intensity increased initially, reached a maximum when the DL was 0.1718 mol%, and then decreased. At a DL of 0.1718 mol%, the CS-perylene/PVA nanofiber membrane could emit bright green fluorescence. Meanwhile, the labeling of the perylene unit did not bring about adverse effects on the surface morphology of the electrospun CS-perylene/PVA nanofiber membrane. The fluorescent CS-perylene nanofibers overcome many shortcomings of the commonly used fluorescent fibers and show great potential for use in the anti-counterfeiting field.