Eur. Phys. J. Special Topics 228, 233–243 (2019)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjst/e2019-800113-4

Regular Article

Morphology dependent electrical property of chitosan film and modeling by fractal theory

¹ Nanostructure Lab, Department of Physics, The Gandhigram Rural Institute (Deemed to be University), Gandhigram 624 302, Tamil Nadu, India
² Department of Mathematics, School of Advanced Sciences, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore 632 014, Tamil Nadu, India
³ Department of Mathematics, The Gandhigram Rural Institute (Deemed to be University), Gandhigram 624 302, Tamil Nadu, India

^a e-mail: kjkumar_gri@rediffmail.com

Received: 22 July 2018
Received in final form: 7 October 2018
Published online: 30 May 2019

Abstract

The present study proposes a more general fractal approach-iterated function system (IFS) model for explaining the morphology of a biopolymer like chitosan dissolved in various organic acids and forming film and compared with the experimental results through multifractal approach. The bio polymer like chitosan has been dissolved in various organic acids like formic, acetic, adipic and the film of the same also have been formed through solution casting technique. The morphology of the prepared films have been obtained from scanning electron microscope (SEM) and the electrical impedance from LCR HIOKI Hi-Tester. The IFS theory is used to generate the morphology of chitosan film dissolved in various organic acids of various concentrations. In order to draw the similarity between morphological structure of experimentally obtained self-similar property of chitosan dissolved in various acids of different concentration of chitosan and the same has been generated by random iterated algorithm. The generalized fractal dimensions are estimated and compared with the electrical property like impedance which follows the same trend. Further, the growth of bacterial colonies and its self-similar structure has been generated by the same method. Hence it is inferred that our model is a more general model for the generation of self-similar property exhibited by nature.