ABSTRACT
Natural polymers received great attention in the biomaterials field; their structural similarities with biological macromolecules make them easily recognized by the bioenvironment and therefore easily metabolized into noncytotoxic residues and naturally eliminated. Chitin is one of the most abundant polysaccharides and can be found in the exoskeleton of crustaceans which can be obtained from the shell waste of the crab, shrimp, crawfish processing industries, various invertebrates, and lower plants. Chitosan is one of chitin’s derivatives, achieved by N-deacetylation of chitin. It is one of the major components used in vascular surgery, tissue culture, and tissue regeneration as a hemostatic agent (Muzzarelli et al., 1986). Improving the fragile nature of films and membrane permeability are the key challenges that need to be addressed for improving chitosan as a biomaterial. In addition, chitosan is expected to be useful in the development of composite materials such as blends or alloys with other polymers, since chitosan has many functional properties (Japanese Chitin and Chitosan Society, 1995). Chitosan is a biopolymer which has many interesting properties that have been utilized in many pharmaceutical applications (Patel and Amiji, 1996). There have been many studies on the blends of chitosan with various kinds of polymers (Guan et al., 1998; Hasegawa et al., 1992; Kim et al., 1992; Xiao et al., 2000; Yao et al., 1996) in order to obtain some improved properties.
