Electroneutral Quaternization/Sulfosuccination for Alleviating the Adverse Effect of Paste Aging on the Properties of Corn Starch Film

For the purpose of alleviating the adverse effect of paste aging on the properties of corn starch film, a series of electroneutrally quaternized/sulfosuccinylated starches（EQSS） with different degrees of substitution（DS） were synthesized via the quaternization/sulfosuccination of acid-thinned corn starch（ATS） by varying the amounts of N-（3-chloro-2-hydroxypropl） trimethylammonium chloride, maleic anhydride, and sodium hydrogen sulfite. The influence of paste aging on the properties of starch film cast from heat-induced starch paste was investigated and the properties were explored in terms of tensile strength, elongation, work at break, degree of crystallinity, and flex-fatigue resistance. The experimental results showed that the paste ageing generated adverse influence on the elongation, work at break, and flex-fatigue resistance of starch film. Further experiments showed that electroneutral quaternization/sulfosuccination of starch were able to alleviate the negative effect of paste ageing on the elongation, work at break, and flex-fatigue resistance, thereby obviously enhancing the elongation, work at break and flex-fatigue resistance, and thus reducing the drawback of brittleness. The enhancement depended on the amounts of the substituents introduced. With the increase in DS value, the elongation and work at break as well as flex-fatigue resistance continuously rose, whereas the tensile strength gradually reduced.

The UV Aging Properties of Maleic Anhydride Esterified Starch/Polylactic Acid Composites

Esterified starch/polylactic acid（ES/PLA） blending composite was prepared by melting extrusion with maleic anhydride esterified starch and PLA as the raw materials. The composite was accelerated aging by using UV aging box, and its properties were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy（FT-IR）, scanning electron microscopy（SEM）, X-ray diffraction（XRD）, thermo gravimetric analysis（TGA） and mechanical testing machine. FT-IR and SEM results show that the infrared absorption peak intensities of C-O, C-H, and C=O in aged samples decrease gradually with increasing aging time. The damage degree of surface and internal of aged samples increases gradually. XRD analysis results show that after aging treatment, the crystalline diffraction peak of thermoplastic esterified starch at 2θ = 21° disappears and the diffraction peaks of PLA at 2θ = 16.5° appear, indicating that the hydrolysis rate of esterified starch is greater than that of PLA. The crystallinity of PLA in aged sample shows an increasing trend at first followed by a decreasing one along with the increasing time of aging treatment, suggesting that the hydrolysis of amorphous regions of PLA is more preferential than its crystalline regions. Because of the influence of crystal structure and the change of composition structure, the initial decomposition temperature of aging test specimen gradually increases with the extension of aging time. The maximum decomposition rate temperature and residual mass increases at first, and then decrease after the aging time extending to 1600 h. As the aging time increases, the damage degree of combination interface between esterification starch and PLA is exacerbated, resulting in the tensile strength and bending strength of aged specimen decreasing gradually.