Synthesis and characterization of starch-poly(methyl acrylate) graft copolymers using horseradish peroxidase

"Available online 9 October 2015"Horseradish peroxidase (HRP)-mediated graft polymerization in the presence of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and acetylacetone (Acac) has been successfully applied to the synthesis of starch-poly(methyl acrylate) (PMA). The graft copolymer was characterized by fourier transform infrared (FT-IR), elemental analysis, nuclear magnetic resonance (1H NMR and 13C NMR), and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). FT-IR, elemental analysis and NMR confirmed that methyl acrylate (MA) was grafted onto starch successfully. DSC results showed the graft reaction had changed the crystalline regions of the gelatinized starch. The effects of pH, MA content, HRP dosage, incubation temperature and time on grafting percentage (GP) and grafting efficiency (GE) were also investigated. The GP and GE under optimal conditions reached 30.21% and 45.13%, respectively.This work was financially supported by the Program for New Century Excellent Talents in University (NCET-12-0883), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (JUSRP51312B), the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province (BK20140150), the Creative Fund of the Cooperation of Industry, Education and Academy of Jiangsu Province, China (BY2013015-18, BY2014023-05) and the Open Project Program of Key Laboratory of Eco-textiles, Ministry of Education, Jiangnan University (KLET1309)