Ultrasonic-Assisted Synthesis and Characterization of Chitosan-Graft-Substituted Polyanilines: Promise Bio-Based Nanoparticles for Dye Removal and Bacterial Disinfection

Abstract EN

The sonication-mediated oxidative-radical copolymerization using ammonium persulfate in acidic medium provides a new successful avenue to graft Chitosan with three methylaniline derivatives.

The synthesized Chitosan-graft-polymethylanilines (CGPMA) were characterized using FTIR, UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy, XRD, thermogravimetric analysis (TGA), elemental analysis, and transmission electron microscopy (TEM).

XRD spectra revealed that CGPMA have a higher crystallinity degree compared to the pristine Chitosan.

In addition, a methyl position-dependent crystallinity is noticeable for the grafted copolymers.

This could be confirmed from TEM images that reflect structure-affected morphologies of different ordering for the graft spherical nanoparticles.

Interestingly, the copolymers prepared under ultrasonic irradiation show a high potency in dye uptake compared to nonsonicated ones.

Moreover, an antibacterial preliminary test on the as-prepared materials was accomplished.

We have achieved promising results, which encourages us to conduct more studies to process these materials in developing biomedical active composites.