Optimisation, antioxidant attributes, stability and release behaviour of carboxymethyl cellulose films incorporated with nanoencapsulated vitamin E.

• α-Tocopherol nanocapsules loaded into carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) film. • The levels of polycaprolactone, α-tocopherol and lecithin were selected as independent variables. • The encapsulation efficiency and release patterns of nanocapsules were determined. • The optimized levels were 75.33 mg of PCL, 200 mg of α-tocopherol, and 2 mg mL−1 of lecithin. • CMC films containing 70% nanocapsules showed the highest antioxidant attributes. The aim of the current study was to optimize vitamin E (α-tocopherol) loaded polycaprolactone (PCL) nanocapsules into the carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) film. For this purpose, polycaprolactone concentration, α-tocopherol level, and lecithin concentration were selected as independent variables, and encapsulation efficiency and nanocapsule size designated as dependent variables. The organization of experiments was carried out using response surface methodology and Box-Behnken design. Afterwards, the α-tocopherol nanocapsule loaded CMC films subjected to antioxidant test, release test and release kinetics. From the results, the encapsulation efficiency of films containing 30–70% α-tocopherol nanocapsules was varied between 88.43 and 99.66%. The enlarged nanocapsules with the enhanced encapsulation efficiency were obtained by increasing in PCL concentration, while increase in α-tocopherol concentration caused a drop in encapsulation efficiency accompanied by distended particle size. The variation in lecithin concentration wasn't significantly (p < 0.05) impact on encapsulation efficiency and nanocapsule size. The desirability function suggested the following concentrations of variables: 75.33 mg of PCL, 200 mg of α-tocopherol, and 2 mg mL−1 of lecithin. Antioxidant potential of CMC films followed a linear pattern with the addition of more α-tocopherol nanocapsules, so that films containing 70% nanocapsules showed the highest radical scavenging activity of 68.85%. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]