Starch Nanoparticles Preparation, Characterization and Applications

2784 Words6 Pages

Starch is the major source of carbohydrates and the great reserves of polysaccharide existing in different plants. Starch mainly consists of two microstructural components linear amylose (20–30%) and branched amylopectin (70–80%). The amylose is essentially a linear polymer composed of α -1,4-linked glucose units, with the molecular weight of about106. The amylopectin, is a highly branched molecule that consists of short α -1,4 chains linked by α -1,6 bonds, with molecular weight of about 1010 [1]. The starch occurs as a semi-crystalline microscopic granule and has a semi-crystalline structure with crystallinity in the range of 15–45% [2]. The short-chain fraction of amylopectin is responsible for the semi-crystalline structure of starch, which are organized as double helices packed in nanocrystallites. A starch is an abundantly available natural biopolymer and has been widely used as the most important ingredients in many industries viz., food, medicine, textile and chemical industries [3] because of its low cost, biodegradability and biocompatibility. The biodegradable films and edible coatings from starch find many applications in food industries [4]. Starch has been widely used as an excipient in preparation of pharmaceutical tablets [5]. Recently, use of starch was reported in many advanced applications as biodegradable starch microspheres in controlled release systems for tissue engineering [6], as a drug delivery carrier [7], and source of carbon in lithium ion battery [8]. Starch nanoparticles are expected to play major role in many engineering applications because of the significantly different and unique properties in comparison to its bulk counterpart.

In recent times lots of efforts have been made for the preparation...

... middle of paper ...

...h smaller crystallites during the wet milling process.

Fig. 8.

4. Conclusions

In the present work starch nanoparticles were successfully prepared by high speed wet stirred media milling method. The effects of solid mass fraction and milling time on particle size were evaluated. The prepared starch nanoparticles exhibited a great degree of stability without the use of any chemical stabilizes. The morphological features of prepared starch nanoparticles were highly dependent on processing time as revealed by FEG-SEM and TEM investigation. The study of structural changes by XRD revealed that crystallinity of starch nanoparticles decreases by prolonged milling. The proposed method can be used for large scale preparation of starch nanoparticles with high yield of SNPs in shorter time. It is highly effective, low cost and can prepare highly dispersed starch nanoparticle.

Open Document