COMPETITION BETWEEN GEL AND POLYANION-POLYCATION COMPLEX-FORMATION INA COLLAGEN-CHITOSAN BINARY-SYSTEM

Collagen and more recently, chitosan have been considered as very inte resting for their possible applications in the field of bioactive biom aterials. Products resulting of their association are currently manufa ctured. In this work, we describe the physicochemical study of the int eraction arising from the presence of chitosan in collagen aqueous sol utions. The charge parameters of these two polymers obviously depend o n the pH of the media. However, in the case of collagen, an additional parameter due to gel formation plays a very important role. Therefore , we show that an apparent charge parameter allows quite well the inte rpretation of its electrostatic properties in particular the formation of a PA-PC complex with chitosan.