PREPARATION, CHARACTERIZATION AND PROPERTY OF CHITOSAN/XYLAN COMPOSITE FILMS

The aim of the study is to combine both advantages of chitosan with xylan as film-forming material, the effect of xylan with different concentrations on the structure and property of chitosan film was investigated. FT-IR, XRD and FE-SEM were used to characterize the structure and morphology of the chitosan-xylan composite films, a wide variety of material characteristics of the chitosan-xylan composite films were investigated. The results showed that there were the hydrogen bond and electrostatical interaction between chitosan and xylan, the introduction of xylan resulted in stronger crystallinity and more compact structure of chitosan film, which were positively proportional to the concentration of xylan. Furthermore, xylan had important effect on the properties of chitosan film. The tensile strength of the chitosan-xylan films increased with the increasing concentration of xylan, water vapor transmission rate, water absorption rate, breaking elongation and anti-ultraviolet performance of chitosan/xylan composite films were higher than those of chitosan film, while the transmittance was slightly lower than that of chitosan film, especially when xylan concentration was 3%, the mechanical properties and anti-ultraviolet performance of chitosan/xylan composite films has been improved greatly. Therefore, the chitosan-xylan composite films can provide more promising applications than pure chitosan film in food packaging system.