Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Carbohydrate Polymers journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/carbpol Ball milling pretreatment facilitating α-amylase hydrolysis for production of starch-based bio-latex with high performance Liqin Liu a , Xingye An a, *, Hao Zhang a , Zonghong Lu a , Shuangxi Nie b , Haibing Cao c , Qingliang Xu c , Hongbin Liu a, * a Tianjin Key Laboratory of Pulp and Paper, Tianjin University of Science and Technology, No. 29, 13th Street, TEDA, Tianjin, 300457, PR China b Guangxi Key Laboratory of Clean Pulp & Papermaking and Pollution Control, College of Light Industry and Food Engineering, Guangxi University, Nanning 530004, PR China c Zhejiang Jing Xing Paper Joint Stock Co., Ltd., No. 1, Jingxing Industry Zone, Jingxing First Road, Caoqiao Street, Pinghu, Zhejiang Province, 314214, PR China ARTICLE INFO Keywords: Ball milling Cassava starch α-Amylase hydrolysis Crosslinking Bio-latex Paper coating ABSTRACT Starch based bio-latex has been widely researched in the coating paper area for the purpose of partial re- placement of petroleum-based binders. In this paper, a green and facile ball milling pretreatment was proposed to modify the starch granules before α-amylase hydrolysis by breaking up their crystalline structure, thus im- proving the accessibility and susceptibility of amylase into starch structure. It was found that the improved hydrolysis process after 8 h ball milling can generate suitable degree of polymerization of polysaccharides or oligosaccharides, which further facilitated the following H 2 O 2 oxidation and SHMP crosslinking processes. In addition, a mechanism was also demonstrated to illustrate the improvement induced by ball milling pretreat- ment. The prepared bio-latex with crosslinking-structure performed excellent adhesive properties when sub- stituted 25 % of petroleum-based latex during paper coating application, which showed great potential in im- proving the economic, cost, and environment benefits of traditional production of coated paper. 1. Introduction Starch, which is the second only to cellulose in global natural abundance, is one kind of versatile and edible polysaccharides widely existing in lots of plants (e.g. corn, wheat, potato, and cassava) (Dai, Li, Zhang, & Cheng, 2018). Starch based functional materials endowed with unique characteristics, have been developed to improve product performance while decreasing the cost and environmental impact (Baruque Filho, Maria da Graca, & Sant’Anna, 2000; Li, Qi, Zhao, Chi, & Cheng, 2019; Padi & Chimphango, 2020; Wang et al., 2019). Starch based bio-latex has significantly aroused tremendous interests in the scientific and industrial community for its advantages of high yield, low cost, biocompatibility, and bio-degradability, etc. (Du et al., 2017; Li et al., 2019) Petroleum based latex, such as (SB), polyvinyl acetate (PA) and styrene acrylics (SA) latex, has been widely applied for a long time in the industrial applications, such as papermaking and coating areas, considering their attractive properties including high surface strength, high glossiness, and more importantly, low production cost etc. (Dong et al., 2020; Du et al., 2017) Nevertheless, the over-exploitation and utilization of non-renewable fossil oil would result in seriously environmental pollution, resource exhaustion and global warming is- sues etc., and further restrict the sustainable development of petroleum based latex (Umar & Abubakar, 2014). Moreover, the non-degradability and environmentally hazardous property of petroleum-based latex have greatly forced people to seek for alternative latex which can totally or partially substitute petroleum-based latex. Starch based bio-latex has been struggled to be a feasible alternative to replace petroleum based latex in the production of coating binder and surface sizing agent in papermaking and coating industry (Bloembergen, 2008; Klass, 2007; Van Leeuwen & Klass, 2006). How- ever, there are still limitations encountered in the R&D and application of starch based bio-latex due to the inherently unsatisfactory cohesive surface strength and colloidal stability properties, thus would impede its further broad applications (Yang et al., 2010; Yang, Tang, Wang, Kong, & Zhang, 2014). Currently, many researchers have studied var- ious preparation methods including biological techniques, chemical approaches and mechanical methods or combined approaches, to im- prove the properties and performances of starch based bio-latex (LeCorre, Vahanian, Dufresne, & Bras, 2012; Smeets, Imbrogno, & Bloembergen, 2017; Wang & Copeland, 2013; Zhang, Wang, Zhao, & Wang, 2012). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.carbpol.2020.116384 Received 19 March 2020; Accepted 27 April 2020 ⁎ Corresponding authors. E-mail addresses: anxingye@126.com, anxingye@tust.edu.cn (X. An), hongbin@tust.edu.cn (H. Liu). Carbohydrate Polymers 242 (2020) 116384 Available online 15 May 2020 0144-8617/ © 2020 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. T