Functional behaviour of paper coated with zinc oxide–soluble starch nanocomposites

Zinc oxide (ZnO) is a potential pigment material for paper coating to impart brightness and better printing properties. Nano-ZnO, due to its extremely small size, gives paper coating pigment a high covering power apart from anti-fungal and UV-protecting properties. In this work, zinc oxide–soluble starch nanocomposites (nano-ZnO) was prepared by a simple and novel wet chemical method using zinc nitrate and sodium hydroxide as precursors and soluble starch as stabilizing agent. Primary particle size distribution was extracted from small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) measurements by the hard sphere model and calculated to have an average size of 4.1 nm. This nano-ZnO was coated on the surface of base paper (59 GSM) in a laboratory paper coater and their properties were studied. The brightness, whiteness, paper smoothness, print density, print uniformity, picking velocity and oil absorbency of nano-ZnO coated paper showed significant improvement than that of bulk-ZnO coated paper. In addition, the nano-ZnO coated paper showed excellent anti-fungal and UV-protecting properties that are much essential to enhance the life of a paper.