Simple formation of chitosan tablet with self-supporting blocks: Fe3+-mediated supramolecular coordination

Fabrication of chitosan-based composites without tedious procedures and significant biological hazard arising from using glutaraldehyde in the Schiff base reaction is highly needed. An environmentally friendly chitosan tablet is fabricated using Fe 3+ -mediated chitosan complexes via metallo-supramolecular chemistry. The structural properties of the material were investigated by SEM, FTIR, Raman and XRD, and the results indicated that Fe 3+ could chelate with chitosan via a “hide-and-seek” strategy to form well crosslinked polymer network. Moreover, the swelling behavior of the chitosan tablet showed that maximum swell ability achieved at pH 7.4. In addition, the chitosan tablet displayed pH-stimulated release properties, and its construct (i.e. chitosan-Fe 3+ complexes) was released efficiently at pH 1.0. Furthermore, the cytotoxicity experiments confirmed that chitosan tablet was compatible with human cell. Based on these results, we demonstrate here that the obtained chitosan tablet would be an oral iron supplementation potentially for treatment of iron deficiency anemia (IDA).