Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Robust And Flexible Films From 100% Starch Cross-Linked By Biobased Disaccharide Derivative, Helan Xu, Hazal Canisag, Bingnan Mu, Yiqi Yang

Department of Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

In this research, oxidized sucrose, a novel aldehyde-based green cross-linker, endowed starch films with substantial improvement in both tensile strength and elongation, whereas many other cross-linkers did not. Starch films are usually weak, brittle, and highly moisture sensitive, and thus have restricted industrial applications. Cross-linking is one of the most common methods to tackle these problems. However, most of the available cross-linkers are either toxic, expensive, or with low cross-linking efficiencies. Oxidized sucrose is a green cross-linker with multiple aldehyde groups per molecule to cross-link starch molecules via forming hemiacetals/acetals. The starch films cross-linked with oxidized sucrose had tensile strength …