Hi, if not mistaken, 1% acetic acid mixture is used to dissolve chitosan for making chitosan particles. With just water, chitosan could not be dissolved.
Thanks for answer! The real question behind the previous question,is why you have to protonate the chitosan (with the acetic acid) to do the particles?
The solubilization occurs by protonation of the –NH2 function on the
C-2 position of the D-glucosamine repeat unit, whereby the polysaccharide is converted to a polyelectrolyte in acidic media (copied from http://farmacia.udea.edu.co/~marinos/chitin.pdf)
May be you can refer to this article.
thanks! but my question still is WHY you have to dissolve the chitosan in acetic acid to make the particles??
try to understand the basics of solubility !
How u can prepare chitosan particles without solubilization of chitosan !!
Chitosan is not soluble in water, but soluble in acidic condition ! so particles formation depend on how u can solubilize the the chitosan !
It is not necessary to use acetic acid. Its solubility depends on the pH. I prepared CS solutions using water and adjusting the pH with HCl or NaOH:
"CS solutions (500 μ g · mL − 1 ) were obtained dissolving the polymer by magnetic
stirring in highly purified water ( > 15 M Ω ) adding HCl and adjusting the final pH to 3.1 (adding about 22 μ mol HCl/mg CS).
Macromol. Chem. Phys. 2013, 213, 99−106
The issue is that chitosan is insoluble in water! it requires a mild acid like 1% acetic acid to make it soluble. If you used water and HCl, it is still the same thing you want to achieve, just to acidify the medium, otherwise chitosan ordinarily will not dissolve in water.
Moreso, you need to liquify the chitosan for you to be able to use it in making nanoparticles because in that form chitosan will be able to ionize and be ready to interract with any molecule you want to react with it.
Hello Alejandra! It might help you to visualize what may occurs with a chitosan in 1 % acetic acid. (click open in new window)
Hello Stella!!!
It is not exactly a reaction . What happens is a protonation of amine groups.This way the amine groups become charged positively and, by electrostatic repulsion, the chitosan chain " unfold", favoring the solubilization.
Hi Alejandra, with regards to acetic acid, you can use 0.1% solution as well to dissolve the low molecular weight Chitosan (deacetylation degree 95%). As indicated by others, it is insoluble in water and the solvent should be acidic (weak acid is better than that of strong acid).
Hi, do you know if chitosan will fold at basic conditions? Is folding of chitosan sometimes a problem in its synthesis?
Hi,
A bit deviated problem from the one being discussed in this thread.
I am currently preparing chitosan nanoparticles. I was able to get chitosan particles with
I agree with all the answers especially with those of Dr. Sin Yee Lee and Dr. Nazrul Islam
All the best,
Mostafa
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