Morphological analysis on crosslinked plasticized starch filled with microcrystalline cellulose

Abstract

This work investigates the effect of the photo and peroxide crosslinked thermoplastic starch on the morphological properties of thermoplastic starch (TPS) / microcrystalline cellulose (MCC) films. Granulated starch will converted into thermoplastic like in the presence of glycerol as plasticizer. The amount of MCC filler carried out in this research is 0 %, 3 %, 6 %, 9 % and 12 % of the dry weight of starch. The morphological properties of photo-crosslinked TPS and peroxide crosslinked TPS were were analysed by using scanning electron microscope (SEM) and optical microscope for soil burial and weathering test. Each formulation has undergone tensile test to study their stress-strain properties and the optimum formula is obtained for subsequent studies. The increasing MCC loading increase the tensile properties of the TPS/MCC up to 6% MCC as support by morphology study. The increament in tensile strength was confirmed by the SEM study that showed better dispersion of MCC in the TPS matrix and exhibited coarser surfaces as compared to uncrosslinked counterpart. The TPS/MCC films also can last more than 20 days under soil burial test. The thermoplastic starch films will start to degrade after placed under normal weathering conditions for 20 days while the addition of rainfall will also accelerate the degradation process.