320 | wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/ijac Int J Appl Ceram Technol. 2020;17:320–326. © 2019 The American Ceramic Society 1 | INTRODUCTION Recently, tissue engineering has advanced significantly in the field of wound healing on the skin especially in skin substitutes in the case of burns. 1 The principle of tissue engineering is to develop biocompatible and bioresorbable substitutes that accel- erate the closure of the wound and restore the functionality of the scar tissue. 2,3 Nanocomposites designed with multiple organic‐ inorganic components and appropriate porous structures can satisfy the growing need of carriers that are suitable for wound healing applications. Natural and synthetic polymers have been used for the fabrication of membranes in fabric engineering. Among these polymers, polyvinyl alcohol has been com- monly used in biomedical devices because of its excellent biocompatibility and biodegradability properties. 4 However, for the acceleration of the wound healing process many in- organic components can be incorporated into the polymer network to provide the desired mechanical and bioactive characteristics. 5,6 Palygorskite is a fibrous mineral clay with a 2:1 filosili- cate structure, which contains two tetrahedral silicate layers bound by a central octahedral layer through common oxy- gens. Because it has a moderate surface charge and cation exchange capacity, palygorskite has been widely used as a carrier for antimicrobial substances, which can be removed from its structure and subsequently released at a suitable rate. 7,8 Based on previous studies, this clay has been widely applied as a pharmaceutical excipient for both oral and top- ical administration. 9 The antibiotic neomycin is an effective aminoglycoside against a broad spectrum of Gram‐negative and Gram‐positive bacteria, being widely used in medica- tions such as ointments, creams, and eye drops. 10 For the production of the membranes, the tape casting technique has proven to be feasible because it presents a sim- ple, economically accessible, and widely used technology for the production of homogeneous ceramic substrates with se- lected thickness between 10 μm and 1 mm. 11‒14 Under these premises, the aim of this work was to pro- duce ceramic tapes using palygorskite and polyvinyl alcohol in order to study the behavior of the clay in suspension, con- sidering the possible pharmaceutical application as tissue en- gineered membranes. Received: 7 April 2019 | Revised: 7 April 2019 | Accepted: 26 April 2019 DOI: 10.1111/ijac.13274 ORIGINAL ARTICLE Palygorskite sheets prepared via tape casting for wound healing applications Anna Karla de Carvalho Freitas 1 | Bruna Maria Saorin Puton 2 | Ana Paula da Silva Peres 1 | Rogério Luis Cansian 2 | Sibele Berenice Castella Pergher 1 | Wilson Acchar 1 1 Post‐graduation Program of Science and Materials Engineering, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, Natal, RN, Brazil 2 Department of Agrarian Sciences, Integrated Regional University of Upper Uruguay and Missions, Erechim, RS, Brazil Correspondence Ana Paula da Silva Peres, Post‐graduation Program of Science and Materials Engineering, Federal University of Rio Grande do Norte, 59078‐900 Natal, RN, Brazil. Email: anapsperes@gmail.com Funding information This work was supported by the CAPES. Abstract The main objective was to increase the applicability of palygorskite by palygorskite sheets using a tape casting method. The stability of the suspension was investigated and the tapes were characterized by TGA/DTA, XRD, and SEM‐FEG. The antimi- crobial activity was analyzed in order to test the applicability of a newly modified drug release system that incorporates neomycin in palygorskite. Preliminary results showed that the palygorskite sheet prepared via the tape casting is promising for wound healing applications. KEYWORDS antimicrobial activity, clay, neomycin, palygorskite, tape casting