Polysaccharides show versatile physicochemical properties and can be used for many applications ranging from packaging to functional coatings. This presentation gives an overview about the different ways to design new material using compounding processes.  Cellulosic materials such as cellulose films or cellulose acetate membranes can be modified on their surface in order to introduce new properties. An aqueous layer by layer coating with positively charged polysaccharides and negatively charged nano-clay platelets for instance, can be used as a barrier coating for water vapour and cellulose acetate membranes can be modified with chitosan and carboxymethyl cellulose, to generate anti-fouling or anti-microbial coatings. Furthermore cellulose itself has several unique properties. Its special chemical and physical structure makes it an ideal candidate for the production of hydrophilic but insoluble nanometric surface coatings on solid substrates. One of the methods to produce such structures is to coat cellulose derivatives on substrates and subsequently regenerate these coatings to pure cellulose. Various thin films of cellulose can be produced and characterized with respect to their surface properties using contact angle measurements and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. These films can micro-structured using lithographic processes in combination with enzymatic digestion. Furthermore structure property relationships of cellulosic bulk materials can be elucidated by small or wide angle X-ray scattering (SWAXS) whereas surface characteristics and orientation effects can be studied by gracing incidence small or wide angle X-ray scattering (GI-SWAXS). As another example cellulose acetate nanoparticles with incorporated functional polysaccharides can be manufactured. These particles show an outstanding application potential for targeted drug delivery and antimicrobial or antifouling surface coatings.  The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement No. 214653.

Functional materials from polysaccharides

245th National Meeting (2013)

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