Homogeneous deacetylation and degradation of chitin in NaOH/urea dissolution system

Since being discovered, alkali/urea has been widely used in the dissolution of natural polysaccharides and the preparation of functional materials such as hydrogels, fibers, films and nanoparticles. This work will focus on verifying the structural stability, homogeneous degradation and deacetylation of chitin in alkali-soluble systems. The chitin was dissolved in NaOH/urea solution and stored at different temperature. At the specific time, the structure, viscosity, acetylation degree (DA) and biocompatibility of chitin and prepared chitosan were determined. The results indicated that dissolution process did not affect the structure and bioactivity of chitin. However, with the increase of storage time and temperature, chitin undergone significant homogeneous deacetylation (DA from 99.5% to 33.2%) and degradation (viscosity from 9284 cP to 1538 cP), accompanying by changes in crystalline structure and thermal stability. Moreover, the processed chitins were no-toxic for the biomedicine applications. This work will provide new ideas for the application of alkali-soluble systems.