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Entanglement network of chitin and chitosan in ionic liquid solutions
Author(s) -
Horinaka Junichi,
Urabayashi Yuhei,
Takigawa Toshikazu,
Ohmae Masashi
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
journal of applied polymer science
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.575
H-Index - 166
eISSN - 1097-4628
pISSN - 0021-8995
DOI - 10.1002/app.39459
Subject(s) - chitin , chitosan , ionic liquid , cellulose , solvent , polysaccharide , polymer , polymer chemistry , viscoelasticity , chemical engineering , materials science , agarose , chemistry , organic chemistry , chromatography , composite material , engineering , catalysis
ABSTRACT Concentrated solutions of a chitin from squid pens and of two commercial samples of chitosan were successfully prepared by using an ionic liquid 1‐butyl‐3‐methylimidazolium acetate as a solvent. The dynamic viscoelasticity data for the solutions exhibited rubbery plateaus, indicating the existence of entanglement network of chitin and chitosan in the solutions. To characterize the network, the values of the molecular weight between entanglements ( M e ) for chitin and chitosan in the solutions were determined from the plateau moduli. Then the values of M e in the molten state ( M e ,melt ), a material constant reflecting the inherent nature of polymer species, for chitin and chitosan were estimated to be 1.7 × 10 3 and 3.0 × 10 3 , respectively. It was found that there was a significant difference in M e ,melt between chitin and chitosan. Compared with other polysaccharides such as cellulose and agarose in terms of the number of monosaccharide units between entanglements ( N unit ), chitin had significantly smaller N unit of 8, while chitosan had equivalent N unit of 19. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 130: 2439–2443, 2013