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    Structure and properties of thermomechanically processed silk peptide and nanoclay filled chitosan

    Year: 2020

    Journal: Nanocomposites, Volume 6, page 125–136

    Authors: Chen, Pei; Xie, Fengwei; Tang, Fengzai; McNally, Tony

    Organizations: European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie Grant [798225]; China Scholarship Council (CSC)China Scholarship Council; Guangxi Key Laboratory for Polysaccharide Materials and Modification, Guangxi University for Nationalities, China [GXPSMM18ZD-02]

    Keywords: Chitosan; silk peptide; nanoclay; biopolymer blends; biopolymer nanocomposites; mechanical properties; surface hydrophilicity

    While chitosan has great potential for biomedical and wider application due to its appealing characteristics such as biocompatibility and inherent antimicrobial activity, its properties usually need to be further tailored for specific uses. In this study, the effect of inclusion of silk peptide (SP) and nanoclays (montmorillonite, MMT and sepiolite, SPT) on the properties of thermomechanically processed chitosan were examined. Blending SP with chitosan led to a material with greater elasticity and surface wettability. For the chitosan matrix, addition of either MMT or SPT resulted in increased mechanical properties with MMT being more effective, likely due to its 2D layered structure. For the chitosan/SP matrix, while inclusion of MMT caused increased mechanical properties and thermal stability, SPT was more effective than MMT at reducing surface hydrophilicity and SPT fully counteracted the increased surface hydrophilicity caused by SP. Thus, this work shows the different effects of MMT and SPT on chitosan-based materials and provides insights into achieving balanced properties.inclusion of [GRAPHICS] .
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