EN 
Robust and consistent performance of home and personal care products is critically important; particularly given their relevancy and presence in our daily lives. Alongside this need is the increased desire for sustainable materials and the rise in the number of natural and/or bio-based ingredients in the marketplace. Yet, without achieving performance equal to or greater than petroleum-based materials, natural and bio-based alternatives will not fully replace incumbent materials nor satisfy customer and consumers’ needs.
IFF has developed a new-to-the-world class of polysaccharides that can address these considerations. The resulting innovation – Designed Enzymatic Biomaterials (DEB) – gives rise to products that drive performance enhancements while being bio-based, and can be designed to be biodegradable.
1 A sustainable, fungible feedstock
In the bio-revolution, plant-based sugars can replace fossil feedstocks. Sustainable feedstocks from agricultural crops such as sugar beet or sustainably-farmed sugar cane are converted in biorefineries into products serving the food, feed, material and energy markets.
2 Enzymatic Polymerization
The designed enzymes are used to catalyze the conversion of sucrose to form the poly-glucose material (polysaccharide).
3 Polysaccharides with highly tunable properties
The enzymatic polymerization process allows for precise control of the way glucose molecules are linked, leading to a consistent, high-quality biomaterial with customizable properties. This enables access to a wide range of polymer length, material morphologies and control in further functionalization.
The Designed Enzymatic Biomaterials bring three important benefits that makes the alpha-glucan molecule unique. They are highly customizable, have excellent structural uniformity, and can be designed to be biodegradable.
With the DEB generation of functional ingredients, formulators, brands and customers will no longer have to choose between sustainability and performance.
IFF’s DEB technology takes the rational design of modern polymer science into the enzymatic polymerization/catalysis domain and will propel this field forward and allow breakthrough scientific discoveries and industrial implementation. In fact, Designed Enzymatic Biomaterials have the potential to break the trade-off between performance and sustainability to become a true enabler for the home and personal care industry of the future.
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