Designing strategy for coating cotton gauze fabrics and its application in wound healing

•A novel burn wound healing material was developed.•Ag NPs/cationized cotton gauze fabrics/drug was prepared.•The biopolymer salicyl-imine-chitosan Schiff base was synthesized.•Burn wound healing of Ag NPs/cationized cotton gauze fabrics/drug was achieved by coated it with salicyl-imine-chitosan.•The modified cotton gauze fabrics were displayed excellent antimicrobial as well as excellent burn wound healing properties. Herein, a novel burn wound healing material was developed by new strategy. This strategy involved two steps. In the first step, the cotton gauze fabrics were modified with Quat 188 as cationizing agent. After that, the cationized cotton gauze fabrics were developed via in-situ incorporating of silver nanoparticles (Ag NPs) and then loaded with oxytetracyline hydrochloride drug to produce the cationized cotton gauze fabrics/Ag NPs/drug (S1). In the second step, chitosan (CS) was reacted with different amount of salicylaldehyde (SA) via Schiff base reaction to produce salicyl-imine-chitosan biopolymer. Then, the salicyl-imine-chitosan biopolymer was coated onto S1. The functional properties of modified cotton gauze fabrics, including the swelling rate capacity %, dehydration rate %, and antimicrobial as well as burn wound healing properties were evaluated. The overall results suggest that, the modified cotton gauze fabrics can be utilized in biomedical textiles as antimicrobial and burn wound healing properties.