Morphology evolution and gelation mechanism of alkali induced konjac glucomannan hydrogel

A molecular-level mechanism of alkali induced konjac glucomannan (KGM) hydrogel gelation processing is considered with the application of nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy and atomic force microscopy (AFM) as complementary methods to diffusive wave spectroscopy (DWS) microrheology and thermoanalysis. It is shown that deacetylation of KGM chains occurs immediately upon mixing with Na2CO3, inducing self-packaging. Partial unfolding of...