eng Oriental Scientific Publishing Company Biosciences Biotechnology Research Asia 0973-1245 2016-05-05 8 2 399 407 9213 article Mohammad Sadeghi 1 Nahid Ghasemi 1 Mojgan Yarahmadi 2 Department of Chemistry, Science Faculty, Islamic Azad University, Arak Branch, Arak (Iran). Department of English, Faculty of Humanities, Arak Branch, Islamic Azad University, Arak (Iran). In this work, Large numbers of cyanide functional groups were introduced onto starch by grafting with polyacrylonitrile (PAN). The graft copolymerization reactions were carried out under nitrogen atmosphere using ceric ammonium nitrate (CAN) as an initiator. Evidence of grafting was obtained by comparing FTIR spectra and TGA of starch and the graft copolymer as well as solubility characteristics of the products. The synthetic conditions were systematically optimized through studying the influential factors including temperature, concentration of the initiator, acrylonitrile monomer and starch. Finally, Overall activation energy of grafting (Ea) was also estimated 39.7 kJ/mole. https://www.biotech-asia.org/vol8no2/modification-structure-of-starch-by-graft-copolymerization-with-polyacrylonitrile-and-calculation-grafting-parameters/ Starch; Polyacrylonitrile; Graft ; Ceric ammonium nitrate; Copolymers