Green recoating of cotton fiber by different starching methods

Abstract

Natural fiber composites require coupling agents between phases to prevent poor adhesion between lignocellulosic fiber and a polymer matrix, which leads to a material that is not fully biodegradable. This work proposes the use of starch gum as a coupling agent for cotton fibers. The gum formation and fiber coating were characterized based on the starch paste solubility, clarity level according to UV-visible spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, thermal gravimetric analysis, heated optical microscopy, and fiber weight coating. Water-starch solutions were heated at 70 C for 5, 10, and 24 h with two concentrations (3 and 8 wt.%) to obtain six different systems of gelatinized starch and starched fibers. The fibers are coated during the process of gelatinization and then dried and vacuum filtered. The gelatinization occurs at 70 C for bath samples heated for more than 5 h, which exhibits a more branched structure, higher thermal stability, and increased weight coating up to 140 wt.%. The recoating process promoted stronger fiber adhesion, which would make this reinforcement applicable in an industrial-scale process to produce fully biodegradable composites.

Preparation and antimicrobial activity of ZnO-NPs coated cotton/starch and their functionalized ZnO-Ag/cotton and Zn(II) curcumin/cotton materials

“…www.nature.com/scientificreports www.nature.com/scientificreports/ In this present research, corn starch (1-3 starch wt.%) as none toxic material was used to enhance adhesion properties of the cotton fiber surface 30 , for loading zinc oxide nanoparticles. The formation of ZnO-NPs coated cotton and starched cotton fibers and its functionality materials, ZnO-Ag and Zn(II) curcumin are described in Fig.…”

“…The plates were allowed to grow overnight at 37 °C and the viable bacteria were counted. 30 requires the use of coupling agents between phases to avoid the poor adhesion between cotton fibers and metal oxides nanoparticles, this work is proposed to prepare starched fibers 30 . The starched cotton materials were prepared by treatment of pristine cotton with corn starch at three different concentrations (1-3 starch wt.%) at 70 °C for 5 hours, vacuum filtered and dried to obtain gelatinized starched cotton fibers.…”