Recent advances in bionanocomposites: Preparation, properties, and applications

PVA, PVA Blends, and Their Nanocomposites for Biodegradable Packaging Application

“…The properties of PVA generally depend on its molecular weight and degree of hydrolysis with the molecular weight of PVA generally ranging between 20,000-400,000 and based on the length of vinyl acetate used to produce PVA -the degree of hydrolysis is typically in the range of 80-99%. For example, tensile strength, water, block and solvent resistance are found to increase with increasing molecular weight and degree of hydrolysis; whereas the flexibility, solubility and water sensitivity decrease [33,40,41] , as shown in Figure 5. The presence of many hydroxyl groups on the PVA surface makes it one of the most hydrophilic polymers with high moisture sensitivity, and hence its resulting blends and composite materials have become popular for packaging applications [42,43] , as demonstrated in Table 1.…”

“…Starch, belonging to polysaccharide family, is abundant in nature. It is water soluble, odourless, tasteless, colourless, transparent, non-toxic, with low oxygen permeability, completely biodegradable in water and soil and cost-effective [20,22,40,58] . Starch granules are typically 0.5-175 µm in size, depending on their source such as tubers (e.g.…”

“…wheat, corn and rice) and legumes (e.g. lentils and pea) [20,22,40,[80][81][82] , as illustrated in Figure 8. Starch with a chemical formula (C6H10O5)n consists of two major types of macromolecules, namely 20-30% amylose and 70-80% amylopectin with small amounts of lipids, phosphate, protein, amino acid and gluten, obtained from the manufacturing process.…”

Elastic Behavior of Nanophases in Polyvinyl Alcohol (PVA)/Bamboo Charcoal (BC) Nanocomposite Films

“…Carbon based nanofillers such as carbon nanotubes (CNTs) are considered as more effective nanoreinforcements. However, high material cost and nanotoxicity may hinder their widespread use in nanocomposite systems since human cells can be damaged by inhaling CNT nanoparticles that are potentially accumulated in cytoplasm (Mousa et al, 2016). On the other hand, evident particle agglomeration at high content levels becomes a typical obstacle to the use of graphene sheets.…”

“…With increasing the production of synthetic polymers, serious concerns have been raised in relation to heavy pollution to ground and surface water, as well as landfilling. More importantly, the disposal of synthetic polymers becomes more challenging considering that a majority of these polymers resist physical and chemical degradation (Jayasekara et al, 2005;Mousa et al, 2016). As such, PVA, as one of popular biopolymers has received great attention as the alternative to general synthetic polymers owing to its good flexibility, water solubility, recyclability and biotribological properties.…”