Facile preparation of biodegradable chitosan derivative having poly(butylene glycol adipate) side chains

Various modes are being explored for the construction of functional materials from nanoparticles. Despite these efforts, the assembly of nanoparticles remains challenging with respect to the requirement of multiple component organization on varying dimensions and length scales. The graft copolymers of chitosan with poly(butylene glycol adipate) (PBGA) were prepared due to the esterification reaction between PBGA and 6-O-succinate-N-phthaloyl-chitosan (PHCSSA) in the presence of toluene as a swelling agent. The graft copolymers are nanoparticles with the size of few hundred nanometers as observed from TEM. It is a potential method to combine chitosan with the hydrophobic synthetic polymers. The grafting reactions were conducted with various PBGA/PHCSSA feed ratios to obtain chitosan-g-PBGA copolymers with various PBGA contents. FT-IR, NMR, XRD, spectrofluorophotometer, and TEM were detected to characterize the copolymers.