Unveiling the effect of molecular weight of vanillic acid grafted chitosan hydrogel films on physical, antioxidant, and antimicrobial properties for application in food packaging.

Till now, a wide range of chitosan (CHS)-based food packaging films have been developed. Yet, the role of molecular weight (MW), which is an important physical property of CHS, in determining the physicochemical and biochemical properties of vanillic acid (VA)-grafted CHS hydrogel films synthesized using CHS with different MWs has not been investigated until now. Three kinds of CHS including low, medium, and high MWs were grafted separately with VA through a carbodiimide mediated coupling reaction.

Shape Memory Polymer-Based Nanocomposites Magnetically Enhanced with FeO Nanoparticles.

This work aimed to investigate the effect of magnetic FeO nanoparticles (MNP), which are known to have a wide range of applications in recent years, on nanocomposite films prepared with shape memory polymers. Herein, PLA-PEG blend nanocomposite films were prepared by solution casting method using MNP at different ratios. PLA-PEG Blend/MNP nanocomposite films were characterized with Attenuated total reflection infrared spectroscopy (ATR-IR) to determine the -C=O stretching of PLA and Fe-O stretching signals of FeO.