Matrix assisted pulsed laser evaporation of pullulan tailor-made biomaterial thin films for controlled drug delivery systems

We report the first successful deposition of cinnamate-pullulan polysaccharide thin films by Matrix Assisted Pulsed Laser Evaporation (MAPLE). Thin film depositions were performed in vacuum using a KrF* excimer laser source (λ = 248 nm, τ ≈ 20 ns) operated at a repetition rate of 10 Hz. The dependence on incident laser fluence of the induced surface morphology is studied. We demonstrated by Raman spectroscopy that our MAPLE-deposited cinnamate-pullulan thin films are composed of starting materials preserving their chemical structures, with no impurities.