Structure and properties of chitin whisker reinforced chitosan membranes

In this paper, rod-like chitin whisker was used as a filler to reinforce the chitosan membrane, and a series of composite membranes were prepared by casting-evaporation method. Mechanical testing shows that tensile strength of the resulting composite membrane with 3 wt% chitin whisker content reaches up to 110.3 MPa, which is about 2.8 times than that of neat chitosan membrane (38.5 MPa), and moisture regain of all composite membranes presents a decreasing tendency with increasing content of chitin whisker. Furthermore, SEM was used to investigate the morphology difference between neat chitosan membrane and composite membranes, to understand the reinforce mechanism of chitin whisker. Wide angle x-ray diffraction and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy were used to visualize the structure change before and after the compositing processes. Besides, the bacterostatic test shows that this composite membrane presents effective inhibitory effect on Staphylococcus aureus, Escherchia coli and Corinebaterium michiganence respectively, which indicates it a promising material for packaging and wound dressing.