Eco-friendly preparation of electrically conductive chitosan - reduced graphene oxide flexible bionanocomposites for food packaging and biological applications

abstract

Electrically conductive materials have been highlighted in the biomedical and food packaging areas. Conventional electrically conductive polymers have limited biodegradability and biocompatibility and should be replaced by suitable biomaterials. Herein, electrically conductive bionanocomposites of chitosan and reduced graphene oxide were produced by a green methodology. The reduced graphene oxide was hydrothermally reduced in the presence of caffeic acid and was dispersed into chitosan. The final bionanocomposites achieved an electrical conductivity of 0.7 S/m in-plane and 2.1 x 10(-5) S/m through-plane. The reduced graphene oxide promoted a great enhancement of antioxidant activity and a mechanical reinforcement of chitosan matrix, increasing the tensile strength and decreasing the water solubility. The electrical conductivity, mechanical properties and antioxidant activity of the bionanocomposites can be tuned according to the filler content. These active bionanocomposites, prepared using a green methodology, revealed good electrical and mechanical properties, which make them promising materials for food packaging and biological applications.

keywords

ANTIOXIDANT ACTIVITY; HYDROTHERMAL REDUCTION; CHEMICAL-REDUCTION; RAMAN-SPECTROSCOPY; GREEN REDUCTION; CAFFEIC ACID; FILMS; NANOCOMPOSITES; FUNCTIONALIZATION; FABRICATION

subject category

Materials Science

authors

Barra, A; Ferreira, NM; Martins, MA; Lazar, O; Pantazi, A; Jderu, AA; Neumayer, SM; Rodriguez, BJ; Enachescu, M; Ferreira, P; Nunes, C

our authors

acknowledgements

This work was developed within the scope of the projects: CICECO-Aveiro Institute of Materials (UID/CTM/50011/2019) and I3N (UID/CTM/50025/2013) financed by national funds through the FCT/MEC (Portugal) and when appropriate co-financed by FEDER under the PT2020 Partnership Agreement. The project M-ERA-NET2/0021/2016 - BIOFOODPACK - Biocomposite Packaging for Active Preservation of Food is acknowledged for funding together with ECSEL-H2020 project 1/1.1.3/31.01.2018, POC-SMIS code 115833 -R3PowerUP. CN, NMF and PF thank FCT (Portugal) for the grants (SFRH/BPD/100627/2014, SFRH/BPD/111460/2015 and IF/00300/2015, respectively). This research was partially supported by COST action 15107, Grants No. 101016-080937 and 38973. This publication has emanated from research supported in part by a research grant from Science Foundation (SFI) under the US-Ireland R&D Partnership Programme Grant Number SFI/14/US/I3113. Some of the measurements were performed on equipment funded by Science Foundation Ireland (SFI/07/IN1/B931).

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