%0 Journal Article
%T Size Controlled Synthesis of Starch Nanoparticles by a Microemulsion Method
%A Suk Fun Chin
%A Aressa Azman
%A Suh Cem Pang
%J Journal of Nanomaterials
%D 2014
%I Hindawi Publishing Corporation
%R 10.1155/2014/763736
%X Controllable particles sizes of starch nanoparticles were synthesized via a precipitation in water-in-oil microemulsion approach. Microemulsion method offers the advantages of ultralow interfacial tension, large interfacial area, and being thermodynamically stable and affords monodispersed nanoparticles. The synthesis parameters such as stirring rates, ratios of oil/cosurfactant, oil phases, cosurfactants, and ratios of water/oil were found to affect the mean particle size of starch nanoparticles. Starch nanoparticles with mean particles sizes of 109£¿nm were synthesized by direct nanoprecipitation method, whereas by using precipitation in microemulsion approach, starch nanoparticles with smaller mean particles sizes of 83£¿nm were obtained. 1. Introduction Starch is one of the most commonly used biopolymers in industries because of nontoxicity, biodegradability, biocompatibility, low cost, and being renewable and abundantly available in nature [1¨C3]. There is a growing interest in making use of starch as precursor material for synthesizing starch-based nanoparticles for various biomedical and industry applications such as drug delivery carriers [4¨C7], plastic fillers [8], and biodegradable packaging materials [6, 9, 10]. Various synthetic methods for synthesis of starch nanoparticles such as high-pressure homogenization and miniemulsion cross-linking [11], nanoprecipitation [2, 12, 13], emulsion [14, 15], and microemulsion [16¨C18] have been explored by researchers. High-pressure homogenization is a simple technique and useful for diluted and concentrated samples; however it requires high number of homogenization cycles and possible contamination of product could occur from metal ions coming off from the wall of the homogenizers [19]. Nanoprecipitation method is a favorable method as it is very simple and straightforward method. However, in order to avoid nanoparticles aggregate formation during the precipitation process, only very low concentration of starting materials can be used [13] and large amount of nonsolvent was required in order to obtain spherical shape nanoparticles [2]. Interest in using microemulsion for nanoparticles synthesis arises mainly from the versatile nature of microemulsion system such as mild reaction conditions, simple procedure [20], cost effectiveness, and formation of very small droplet size [21¨C24]. Besides, microemulsion route is known to be one of the most efficient methods for stabilization of nanodroplets and controlling of particle size, morphology, and homogeneity [20, 22]. Components of microemulsion consist of water
%U http://www.hindawi.com/journals/jnm/2014/763736/