Kraft Pulp-Starch Covalent Linking: A Promising Route to a New Material

We reported herein, the synthesis process of a direct cross-linking of modified polysaccharides. azidated starch, and alkyne Kraft pulp were cross-linked in the presence of Cu(I) catalyst, a type of Huisgen's 1,3-dipolar azide-alkyne cycloaddition reaction, leading to the formation of starch cross-linked to kraft pulp fiber. The modified polysaccharides were characterized by Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), X-ray diffraction (XRD) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and their physical properties were tested. The results show that the obtained novel material's properties present an important enhancement compared to Kraft pulp fiber, about 71% and 44% for tear and break indexes respectively, up to 173% for elongation and of 136% for burst index.