Fabrication and characterization of chitin-reinforced magnetic nanoparticles for structural analysis

F. J. WOLMAN; G. J. COPELLO; R. FERNÁNDEZ DE LUIS; G. I. TOVAR; M. I. ARRIORTUA

Bariloche

Congreso; XV Reunión Anual de la Asociación Argentina de Cristalografía (AACr); 2019

Asociación Argentina de Cristalografía

Chitin, a polysaccharide abundant in nature, has the potential for a wide range of industrial and technological applications. Chitin pristine powder (CP) was used for the obtaining chitin gel (CG) and chitin-magnetite nanoparticles composite (CG-MNP) from the wet-spinning process [1]. Magnetite was obtained by a co-precipitation method and characterized by transmission electron microscopy (TEM), DLS, Z-potential and vibrating-sample magnetometry (VSM). The effect of treatments on the structure of chitin have been investigated using scanning electron microscopy (SEM), thermal (TGA-DSC) and BET analysis, and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The formation of the gel showed morphology changes of CP, which lead to a macroporous network on CG samples. TGA-DSC results showed that the CG-MNP nanocomposite is thermally more stable than CG. This could be related to the tightening of the polymer network and the subsequent increase in the chain interaction. Also, BET surface area analysis on the samples showed that the MNP increased the porosity, CG-MNP>CG>CP. Le-Bail and Rietveld refinements of XRD data provided useful information regarding the crystal structure for α-Chitin [2]. Indeed, all cell parameters showed to vary with all treatments. Thisindicates that the processing of CP to CG, or the incorporation of magnetite nanoparticles within the CG, not only alter the macroscopic structure of Chitin polymers, also indicates that a slight reorganization of the polysaccharide chains within the [010] and [001] directions occurs during the process. This novel nanocomposite has promising applications in adsorptive solid-liquid separations by a magnetic field.