Chitin is the second most abundant biopolymer on earth after cellulose and serves as building blocks inside crustacean exoskeleton, insect cuticles, and fungal cell wall. Similar to cellulose, chitin semi-crystalline domain can be further nanofibrillated, hence, offer new possibilities towards novel nanotechnology-derived application due to its nitrogen-rich structure. Most of the literature reported the use of crustacean chitin as raw material due to their high yield per dry weight and readily available resources compared to fungal chitin. However, the existence of covalent linkage between chitin and glucan in native fungal cell wall resulted in �soft� and less crystalline biopolymer that set them apart from crustacean chitin. The possibility of finding ductile, flexible, and other interesting properties inherent in fungal cell walls coupled with the ability of controlling their growth behaviour and life cycle motivate our current study. In this study, chitinious material (chitin-glucan) was extracted from common mushroom cell wall (Agaricus bisporus) and defibrillated to nano-level followed by thin film sheet production. Their morphological, mechanical, chemical, and surface properties were compared with crustacean (Cancer pagurus) chitin film. This study also investigates different properties that contributed by different part of mushroom fruiting body, i.e stipe and pileus towards overall characteristic and performance of resulted film. In addition, separate study on chitin-glucan from tree fungus (Daedaleopsis confagosa) was carried out to investigate the effect of matrix-free biopolymer towards its mechanical strength.

Fungal chitin-glucan: Renewable biopolymer for nanomaterial application

248th National Meeting (2014)

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