Christian Harmoko, Kevin Indrawan Sucipto, Ery Susiany Retnoningtyas, Sandy Budi Hartono
Mesoporous silica materials have emerged as promising platform as supporting materials for enzyme immobilization. However, a significant enhancement of cellulase enzyme activity entrapped inside silica pores remains a challenge. In this paper, we report cellulase enzymes immobilization on vinyl functionalized cubic mesoporous silica materials with different particle sizes and different vinyl concentration. Silica materials possess cubic mesostructured with two different sizes: micron size (around 8 μm) and nano size (around 300 nm) were made by using F127 surfactant at different acid concentrations. In addition, vinyl functionalization at different concentrations was also developed through co-condensation method. Vinyl functionalized nanoparticles showed significant improvements of enzyme activity, stability and reusability compared to the micron size particles. The increase of vinyl concentration with its hydrophobic characteristics within silica materials induced a high loading amount of cellulase enzymes. Vinyl functionalization created benign microenvironment for cellulase enzymes to perform its high activity. We found the benefit of using the vinyl functionalization and also the application of nanoparticles, compared to common large particle cubic mesoporous silica materials. © 2006-2016 Asian Research Publishing Network (ARPN).
Department of Chemical Engineering, Widya Mandala Catholic University, Surabaya, Indonesia