Abstract: As important starch derivatives and fine functional polymer materials, methylated starch is widely used in the field of food, medicine, textiles, building materials, metallurgy and other industry area. Thus an introduce is present to analysis the methylation reactions of starch and its progress, including halogenated alkyl method, dimethyl sulfate method, diazomethane method and dimethyl carbonate method, etc. In particularly, dimethyl carbonate maybe an potential starch methylation reagent because of more technical advantages and commercial values.

Key words: starch, methylating reaction, dimethyl carbonate, methyl halide, dimethyl sulfate, diazomethane