Study on swelling model and thermodynamic structure of native konjac glucomannan.

We investigated the higher structure of konjac glucomannan (KGM) in the amorphous state and solution using a laser particle size analyzer and a water activity meter. The results show that the thermodynamic structures of native KGM were primarily composed of the lamella structure units, which involve both granular crystalline and amorphous regions, and that the connection zones of such units contained both loose and tight aggregation regions. The value of surface tension (sigma) of native KGM, resting with the density of its hydroxyl groups' self-association, was an important parameter to analyze the higher structures of native KGM in the thermodynamic swelling model of native KGM.