Characterization of chitosan and its derivatives using asymmetrical flow field-flow-fractionation: a comparison with traditional methods

Chitosan and its derivatives are an important group of polymers used extensively in pharmaceutics. Thus, their physicochemical properties are of considerable interest and need to be characterized carefully. The most important feature to determine is their molecular weight and molecular weight distribution while the molecular weight of polymers plays an important role as pharmaceutical excipients. In this study, the feasibility of using asymmetrical flow field-flow-fractionation (AF4) connected online to a multi-angle light scattering (MALS) detector to measure the molecular weight of chitosans, trimethyl chitosans were studied and compared with the results from some traditional measurement methods. It was found that the influence of trimethyl chitosan synthesis process on the resulting molecular weight decrease depends on the initial molecular weight of chitosan. Significant molecular weight decrease was observed when chitosan molecular weight was larger than 100 kDa. In contrast, the influence was marginal when the molecular weight of chitosan was less than 50 kDa. The AF4-MALS was found to be a suitable method for the characterization of pure chitosans and trimethyl chitosans.