Fabrication and Thermo-Mechanical Characterization of HEMA Treated UV Photo-Cured Biodegradable Chitosan Film
Pages 86-96
Kamol Dey, Poonam Alamgir,Gulshana Mohol,Shahnaz Parvin, Mubarak A. Khan and Ruhul A. Khan

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.6000/1929-5995.2014.03.02.3

Published: 25 June 2014

Abstract: Chitosan was extracted from dried prawn shell via chitin and was characterized by Fourier Transformed Infrared (FTIR) Spectroscopy. Thin film of chitosan was prepared by solution casting using a 2% chitosan solution. Chitosan was dissolved in 2% acetic acid. Mechanical properties like tensile strength (TS) and elongation at break (Eb%) of chitosan film were studied. Eight formulations (M1: 5% HEMA to M8: 40% HEMA) were developed with 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA) monomer in methanol (MeOH) along with photoinitiator Darocur-4043 (2%). The film was soaked in those formulations for 1 min and cured under UV radiation at different radiation intensities for the improvement of physico-mechanical properties of the film. The cured films were then subjected to various characterization tests like TS, Eb%, water absorption, FTIR spectroscopy, polymer loading (PL), differential thermal analysis (DTA), and thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA). The M6 formulation containing 30% HEMA in MeOH solution showed the best performance at 20^th UV pass. The highest TS, Eb% and PL were found to be 31 MPa, 71.25% and 26.38%, respectively, for the same formulation at 20^th UV pass. The DTA/TGA study showed that the film with M6 formulation at 20^th UV pass was thermally more stable than non-radiated chitosan film. The FTIR analysis revealed the crosslinking between HEMA and chitosan.

Keywords: Chitosan, monomer, cross-linking, grafting, photo-cured, UV radiation).