Abstract

• The chitosan, the naturally abundant and renewable polymers, have excellent properties such as biodegradability, bio-compatibility, non-toxicity and absorption. The polymer sample consisting of the purified chitosan powder was firstly prepared by the slow evaporation of aqueous solution. Demineralization and deproteinization processes were done to obtain purified chitosan powder. The molecular vibration spectrum of the purified chitosan powder was recorded by using Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) Spectroscopy. Chitosan, zinc acetate and chitosan-ZnO films were deposited onto the glass slide by using the spin-coating method. The crystalline state of chitosan powder, the chitosan-ZnO powder and the film were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) and Scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The lattice microstrain of as-grown chitosan powder was calculated to be about 0.9 and it was consistent with the theoretical value of orthorhombic crystal. The crystallite size was calculated to be about 33.2 nm for the chitosan-ZnO powder. According to the XRD results, the chitosan-ZnO film has smaller crystallite size than the chitosan-ZnO powder and it was about 25.6 nm.