RESEARCH PROPOSAL

TITLE OF PROJECT: Fabrication of Biopolymer-Silica Composite Materials for

Enzyme Immobilization

Aims and significance of the project

Organic-inorganic composites composed of organic polymers and silica constitute
an important class of advanced materials. A variety of silica based composites of
polydimethylsiloxanes, polyethers, ketones, polyimides, polyesters, polyethylene oxide,
polystyrene, poly(methylmethacrylate), poly(vinylimidazole), phenol-formaldehyde
resin, poly(propylene) have been reported. These organic-inorganic composites are of
high technical values and find applications in a number of fields such as adsorption,
catalysis, surface coating, chromatography, membrane and thin film technology1-6.
Enzyme catalyzes a remarkable range of catalytic reactions, providing a wealth of
catalysis processes that are otherwise unobtainable or impractical by conventional
synthesis. Inherent problems in the enzymatic reaction are product contamination,
difficulty in separation from a reaction mixture, poor stability and limited reuse and thus
enzyme recovery from a homogeneous catalysis process7 can significantly increase
production costs. To lower the processing requirements, a heterogeneous catalyst-an
immobilized enzyme8,9,10 is of great advantage11. A variety of immobilization materials
are available for use in both laboratories and industrial processes with many of these
materials based on organic polymers (eg. Agarose, dextran etc) which falls under the
categories of soft gels12,13,14 . Several methods have been reported that achieve higher
volumetric activities, the most efficient being physical aggregation of enzymes and
subsequent chemical crosslinking15. Crosslinked enzyme aggregates (CLEAS), are easy to
prepare and as non supported biocatalysts represents an alternative to the use of
expensive supports16.
Silica has been widely used as an inert and stable matrix for enzyme
immobilization owing to its high specific surface areas and controllable pore diameters,
which can be tailored to the dimension of a specific enzyme, where mesoporous silica is
reported to be most suitable17,18. Physical characteristics of nanoparticles, such as
enhanced diffusion characteristics and particle mobility, can impact the inherent catalytic
activity of attached enzymes19. Biologically templated and bioinspired formation of silica
nanoparticles provides a versatile new technology for enzyme immobilization and has
emerged with several inherent advantages. Initial studies focused on the immobilization
of the enzyme within biosilica nanoparticle that were formed by reaction of a silicate
precursor with polysaccharide.
The combination of carbohydrates with silicon-based ceramic materials offers an
attractive mean for the production of composite materials. In the present project synthesis
of composite materials with high performance out of polysaccharides from renewable
resources is aimed. Such polysaccharide/silica composite materials will be synthesized
using sol-gel method from naturally occurring polysaccharides and/or modified
polysaccharides. The advantage of this technique is its versatility to obtain homogeneous
organic-inorganic composites with different structural characteristics and morphology.

Technical programme
The sol-gel technology, by which organic-inorganic composite materials are made
at relatively low temperature, consists of the hydrolysis of the constituent molecular
precursors and subsequent polycondensation to glass like form. The technology allows
incorporation of organic and inorganic additives during the process of formation of the
glassy network at room temperature. For the formation of sol-gel derived silica
biopolymer composite materials two routes are possible.
1. Growth of SiO2 phase with the omnipresence of the biopolymer molecule.
2. Formation of monodisperse silica sols from various precursors and to subsequently
mix the biopolymer with silica solution.
On thermal curing of the hybrid materials so obtained; the surface groups of the silica
globules react with the functional groups available at the biopolymer molecules to create
reinforced SiO2-biopolymer substances, which after high temperatures treatments are
expected to yield nanocompositional hybrid materials of special quality and performance
for various end applications.
Review of status of Research and Development in the subject
International status:
Plenty of nanocompositional hybrid materials of silica and various synthetic
polymers are reported. Some of the recent work is referred below20-26 although these
hybrid materials have good textural, mechanical, thermal properties; natural materials are
more attractive candidates for making hybrid materials because of their potentially low
cost and environmental benign nature. However very little work has been reported with
naturally occurring polysaccharide except few very recent one listed as under27,28.
National status:
To the best of our knowledge no work is being done in this direction in India.
However composite materials of silica with crude and modified polysaccharide for the
removal of heavy metals such as Zn(II), Cd(II) has been reported 29,30,31,32.
Year wise plan of work:
1. In the first year after purification of commercial polysaccharide samples such as
Locust bean gum, Gum Tragacanth will be undertaken for hybrid formation and for the
hybrids formation two routes shall be followed.
a) In the first procedure growth of a SiO2 phase will be concurrently allowed in the
presence of biopolymer molecules.
b) While in the second procedure monodisperse SiO2 sol will be formed first from
various silica precursors (TEOS, THEOS and TMOS) and will be subsequently mixed
with the polysaccharide solutions.
2. The hybrid materials obtained by sol-gel method will be subjected to heat treatment
(1000C to 10000C) in a thermally controlled manner to get porous nanocomposite
materials. Finally these materials will be characterized by various instrumental
techniques like 13C-NMR spectroscopy, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR),
thermo gravimetric analysis (TGA), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), X-ray
diffraction (XRD), thermal emission microscopy (TEM) and BET analysis. Particle size
distribution, pore size and surface area of the hybrids will also be established to know the
applicability areas of the synthesized hybrids.
3. In the third year the bionanocomposites will be evaluated for enzyme immobilization.
REFFERECES:

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