Biobased Nanocomposites with Magnetic and Chelating Properties

GIANINA A. KLOSTER; NORMA E. MARCOVICH; KLEBER R. PIROTA; DIEGO MURACA; MIRNA A. MOSIEWICKI

Campinas

Encuentro; XV Brazilian MRS Meeting; 2016

The use of biopolymers in combination with magnetic nanoparticles has manypotential applications in different areas such as biomedicine, biotechnology andmaterials science, among others. Specifically, chitosan (CH) and alginate (AL) are polymers obtained from biomass that can be useful in the treatment ofwastewater due to their affinity to dyes and heavy metal ions [1]. These twopolysaccharides with opposite charges have the ability to form complexes withdifferent types of contaminants, acting like adsorbents.However, after adsorption it can be difficult to separate and recover theadsorbent polymers from the contaminated solution. The incorporation ofnanomagnetite gives new properties to the material because if the particles areenough small, even embedded in a polymeric matrix, they can be oriented usingan external magnetic field. Thus, adding magnetite to these systems can offer the possibility to recover the material by the application of a magnetic field, to mention just one of the potential special advantages.In this work, chitosan and sodium alginate were selected as the polymericmatrices for the preparation of magnetic films. The nanocomposites werephysical, mechanical and magnetically characterized, pointing out the differences between the two bio-matrices.