The role of the water structure present in hydrogels from nutlets of three species of salvias, S. miltiorrhiza (SM), S. sclarea (SS) and S. viridis (SV), was analyzed by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The sharp endothermic peaks that appeared at 5.9 o C (SM), 2.8 o C (SS) and 1.8 o C (SV) in each 1.0% hydrogel of 10.4-15.8% were not affected by addition of 0.1 M urea and alkali-metal salts. The order-disorder portions in the network were slightly affected by the distribution of freezable and non-freezable water in the hydrogel networks. The SV hydrogel was further used to investigate the effects of additives (0.1-8.0 M urea and 0.1-5.0 M NaCl) on its melting behavior. At 0.5-4.0 M urea and 1.0-3.0 M NaCl, two endothermic peaks appeared, corresponding to unbound (high temperature) and bound (low temperature) water in the gel networks, and eventually merged into one endothermic peak at 5.0-8.0 M urea and 4.0-4.5 M NaCl. After this merger, the endothermic peak shifted to 3.7, 4.0 and 5.6 o C at 5.0, 6.0 and 8.0 M urea, respectively. In the case of NaCl, a combination of peaks that occurred at 4.0-4.5 M were accompanied by a shift to lower temperature (-14.4 and 15.3 o C) and the endothermic peak finally disappeared at 5.0 M NaCl due to the strong binding of water in the gel networks.
Excellent transparent films were prepared from bacterial cellulose (BC) sheets by solubilization of its defibrillated freeze-dried specimens in a solvent of dimethylacetamide (DMAc) containing 8.0% (w/w) lithium chloride (LiCl), and their properties were compared with those of the native BC. Fibrillar structure of the native BC disappeared after dissolution, and the film formed after dissolution also loose this structure. Occurence of structural transformation from crystalline to amorphous state was also evidenced by X-ray diffraction, solid state cross polarization/magic angle spinning 13 C-NMR and attenuated total reflectance-Fourier transform infrared spectroscopic analyses. In addition, excellent 3D uniform structure of the transparent BC film was further evidenced by X-ray micro computed tomography. Plastic-like characteristic was enhanced by film formation after dissolving the BC specimens in the DMAc-LiCl solution as shown by changing mechanical properties, a slight decrease in tensile strength (67.2 to 59.6 MPa) and breaking stress (67.2 to 58.4 MPa) but significant increase in elongation at break from 3.4 to 10.5%, and improvement of work of fracture from 5.8 to 21.2 kJ/m 2 .
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