Study of the supramolecularly ordered layered structure of chitosan gel films

Abstract

Abstract Structural and morphological features of chitosan gel films with a radially periodic structure, obtained by neutralizing the salt form of the polymer with sodium hydroxide or triethanolamine, were visualized by scanning electron microscopy. The formation of such supramolecularly ordered layered structures was found to obey diffusion kinetics and the regularities of Liesegang periodic precipitation. The revealed dependence of the morphostructure of our chitosan gel films on the neutralizing reagent used is due to differences in the diffusion rate of inorganic and organic substance, as well as some spatio-temporal features of the mass transfer process.