Please cite this article in press as: Rudhziah, S., et al., Potential of blend of kappa-carrageenan and cellulose derivatives for green polymer electrolyte application. Ind. Crops Prod. (2015), http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indcrop.2014.12.051 ARTICLE IN PRESS G Model INDCRO-7734; No. of Pages 9 Industrial Crops and Products xxx (2015) xxx–xxx Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Industrial Crops and Products jo ur nal home p age: www.elsevier.com/locate/indcrop Potential of blend of kappa-carrageenan and cellulose derivatives for green polymer electrolyte application S. Rudhziah a,b,∗ , M.S.A. Rani a , A. Ahmad c , N.S. Mohamed d , H. Kaddami e,∗∗ a Institute of Graduate Studies, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia b Centre of Foundation Studies, Universiti Teknologi MARA, 42300 Bandar PuncakAlam, Selangor, Malaysia c School of Chemical Science and Food Technology, Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia, 43600 Bangi, Selangor, Malaysia d Center of Foundation Studies in Science, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia e Cadi Ayyad University, Faculty of Sciences and Technologies, Avenue A. Elkhattabi, B.P. 549, Marrakech 40000, Morocco a r t i c l e i n f o Article history: Received 23 September 2014 Received in revised form 16 November 2014 Accepted 22 December 2014 Available online xxx Keywords: Carboxymethyl kappa-carrageenan Carboxymethyl cellulose Polymer blend Microstructure Polymer electrolytes a b s t r a c t In this study, new biopolymer blend based on kappa-carrageenan and cellulose derivatives were pre- pared using solution casting technique. The cellulose derivative, carboxymethyl cellulose was produced from cellulose extracted from kenaf fibres. The cellulose derivative was blended with different wt% of kappa-carrageenan derivative to obtain free standing films. The properties of the prepared blend films were subjected to fourier transform infrared characterization, tensile test, scanning electron microscopy, dynamic mechanical analysis, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy and linear sweep voltammetry to investigate their structural, mechanical, viscoelastic and electrical behaviour. The FTIR result demon- strated that both polymers are compatible with each other. The mechanical properties of carboxymethyl kappa-carrageenan were enhanced with the addition of carboxymethyl cellulose. The polymer blend with wt% ratio of 60:40 yielded the most conductive film with conductivity of 3.25 × 10 −4 S cm −1 and is expected to be the most suitable blend to be explored for polymer electrolytes application. © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved. 1. Introduction With increasing trend to reduce environment impact caused by human activities, special interest is being paid to explore renewable biopolymer-based materials to replace conventional petroleum- based materials (Siracusa et al., 2008). Biopolymers have widely investigated due to being environmental friendly, nontoxic, and abundant in nature. Furthermore, it could overcome the main shortcoming of synthetic polymer, which is mostly insoluble in the solvents (Ma et al., 2007). Biopolymer materials show good poten- tial to act as polymer hosts in polymer electrolytes due to their good biodegradability and compatibility with salts. Biodegradable biopolymer are attracted more attention as representative water- soluble polysaccharide in many research fields (Samsudin et al., 2012; Barbucci et al., 2000). There are several renewable resource- based biopolymers that are suitable to be used as host polymers ∗ Corresponding author at: Institute of Graduate Studies, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. ∗∗ Corresponding author at: Cadi Ayyad University, Faculty of Sciences and Technologies, Avenue A. Elkhattabi, B.P. 549, Marrakech 40000, Morocco. E-mail addresses: sitiru2875@puncakalam.uitm.edu.my (S. Rudhziah), h.kaddami@uca.ma (H. Kaddami). in the polymer electrolytes. These include starch, cellulose, car- rageenan, chitosan, etc. (Shukur et al., 2013; Samsudin and Isa, 2012; Samsudin et al., 2012; Kumar et al., 2012; Ramesh et al., 2011; Lu et al., 2009). Kappa-carrageenan (-carrageenan) is one of the classes of car- rageenan which extracted from certain species marine red algae (Tranquilan-Aranilla et al., 2012; Fan et al., 2011) while cellulose is the most abundant biopolymer which can be extracted inexpen- sively from plants (Klemm, 2006). -Carrageenan and cellulose can form cross-linking networks with other components in polymer electrolytes because of their rich hydroxyl group in their molecule structure (Yang et al., 2011). Moreover, hydroxyl group of the sugar rings allows substitution with other functional group. Polymers that show extensive hydrogen bonding appear to be more conduc- tive than those that have few hydrogen bonds (Finkenstadt, 2005). To extent the use of -carrageenan and cellulose, chemical modi- fication on -carrageenan and cellulose has been done in order to produce carboxymethyl -carrageenan (CMKC) and carboxymethyl cellulose (CMCE). The new derivatives of -carrageenan and cellu- lose are expected to have more number of oxygen atoms compared to the pristine -carrageenan and cellulose-fibre. These oxygen atoms may provide vacancies for cations and protons to coor- dinate. These will lead to high ionic conductivity and excellent http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.indcrop.2014.12.051 0926-6690/© 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.