FABRICATION AND CHARACTERIZATION OF POROUS CARRAGEENAN MEMBRANE FOR TRNASDERMAL PATCH

Transdermal patch is a medicated adhesive patch on the skin to deliver a drug into the bloodstream. The patch is a porous membrane for contained a drug and controlled release. 
The goal of this study was to prepare a transdermal patch from carrageenan cryogel by using freeze-dried method to maintain the porosity based on the effect of carrageenan concentrations. Scanning electron microscopy was used to study the pore formation of the porous membrane. The carrageenan membrane showed the micropore structure and the pore size decreased
with increasing carrageenan concentrations. Moreover, when the increasing carrageenan concentrations, the swelling behavior decreased because of the increasing polymer chains entanglement.  In addition, the dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) and thermalgravimetric analysis (TGA) were performed. The diclofenac as a drug was loaded into porous carrageenan membrane by a drug adsorption which contained 4 mg of drug before release study.