Surface Activity of Some Low Molecular Weight Chitosan Derivatives

method has been developed to obtain semi synthetic surfactants, as a replacement for synthetic surfactants, by N-substitution reactions for the insoluble low molecular weight chitosan (LMWC) (about 13 kDa) with two different alkyl anhydrides (Acetic and butyric). The new derivatives are soluble in neutral, acidic and basic mediums. This solubility due to the decreasing of LMWC s hydrophobicity by decreasing the intra- and inter-molecular hydrogenbonds by the substitution reactions. The new LMWC-alkyl anhydride derivatives were characterized using: Nuclear magnetic resonance (^1H-NMR) spectroscopy, Fourier transformation infra red (FT-IR) spectroscopy, X-ray powder diffraction (XRD) analysis and Differential scanning calorimetric (DSC) analysis, in addition to the particle size, surface tension measurements and Hydrophilic-Lipophilic Balance (HLB) value calculation.