Effect of plasticizer concentration on fabrication of collagen-based biodegradable films

The effect of glycerol concentration on processability of collagen-based films were analysed. Different plasticizer concentrations were used to study the physical properties, secondary structure and thermal properties of natural biodegradable films prepared from collagen extracted from bovine hides. Acid-enzyme-soluble collagen extracted from calf (CH1) and bull-hides (BH) were the primary material for the solution casting films. Results showed that plasticizer concentrations of 80% (F1) and 40% (F2) did not have a huge effect on the physical properties of the films such as film thickness and transparency. An increase in the plasticizer content did not show a significant change in the film characteristics apart from films being extremely flexible and harder to peel off the casting surface. Within the film sources, BH collagen-based films were slightly thinner than the CH1 collagen-based films. FTIR showed the characteristic bands of collagen observed in literature. FTIR and TGA showed evidence of possible hydrogen bonding with the plasticizer at high glycerol concentrations for both CH1 and BH collagen-based films.