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Trilayered Fibrous Dressing with Wettability Gradient for Spontaneous and Directional Transport of Massive Exudate and Wound Healing Promotion

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Abstract

Excessive exudate at wound sites increases treatment difficulty and severely decelerates the healing process. In wound exudate management, dressings with unidirectional liquid transport capability have exhibited enormous potential. However, it remains challenging to improve the one-way liquid transport efficiency. Herein, a trilayered fibrous dressing is constructed by sequentially electrospinning polyurethane (PU) and polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) onto cotton fabric. Through hot pressing, a stable wettability gradient is formed across the PVDF/PU/cotton dressing due to the melting and bridging of PU nanofibers. The trilayered dressing exhibited rapid unidirectional transport with water penetrating from the hydrophobic side to the hydrophilic side in 6 s. The hydrostatic pressure from the hydrophilic side to the hydrophobic side is 569% higher than that from the hydrophobic side to the hydrophilic side, indicating that the dressing has a profound unidirectional conductivity. In vivo experiments demonstrates that the trilayered dressing can accelerate the wound healing process, especially in the early stages of wound occurrence, by quickly draining the excessive exudate. This study provides a new method to construct wound dressings with wettability gradients, which are advantageous for efficient exudate removal.

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Data availability statement

The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study are available from the corresponding author on reasonable request.

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Acknowledgements

This study was supported by a grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (51973195), Zhejiang Provincial Key Research and Development Program (2020C03042), and “Ten Thousand Plan”-Zhejiang Provincial High Level Talents Special Support Plan (2020R52023).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. MOE Key Laboratory of Advanced Textile Materials & Manufacturing Technology, Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, Hangzhou, 310018, China

    Lei Liu, Jiaming Zhang, Bingjie Xu, Yujie Gao, Dongming Qi & Jindan Wu

  2. Department of Pediatric Surgery, Taizhou Women and Children’s Hospital of Wenzhou Medical University, Taizhou, 318000, China

    Hengqiu Sun

  3. MOE Key Laboratory of Macromolecular Synthesis and Functionalization, Department of Polymer Science and Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou, 310027, China

    Zhengwei Mao

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  1. Lei Liu
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Correspondence to Dongming Qi, Zhengwei Mao or Jindan Wu.

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Liu, L., Sun, H., Zhang, J. et al. Trilayered Fibrous Dressing with Wettability Gradient for Spontaneous and Directional Transport of Massive Exudate and Wound Healing Promotion. Adv. Fiber Mater. 5, 574–587 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s42765-022-00239-3

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