Study of biodegradability of chitosan-based antibacterial films

In one of our previous works, we obtained films based on chitosan, glycerol, and iron (III) cations. These films possess antibacterial properties, thus they can find applications in the food industry and medicine. In this study, we evaluated the biodegradability of previously described films by keeping them in soil for 4 weeks. For the control experiment, we utilized soil that underwent thermal treatment several times during the experiment. 4 out of 5 samples demonstrated mass loss slightly different from the mass loss in the control experiment (the difference in mass loss compared to the control for these samples did not exceed 3%). This might indicate that their mass loss was solely related to the dissolution process. The last sample, containing chitosan, iron chloride, glycerol, and a chitosanderived cation, exhibited a 40% decrease in mass, which is 26% more compared to the control experiment.