Crosslinked Polymer Hydrogels
The use of synthetic crosslinked polymer gels has increased in recent years, due to their unique characteristics such as high mechanical strength, service life and water and oil swelling, as well as being biocompatible. They have been studied as promising
- PDF / 730,143 Bytes
- 26 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 6 Downloads / 247 Views
Crosslinked Polymer Hydrogels Reem K. Farag and Salma Hani
Abstract The use of synthetic crosslinked polymer gels has increased in recent years, due to their unique characteristics such as high mechanical strength, service life and water and oil swelling, as well as being biocompatible. They have been studied as promising candidates in various fields such as cardiac and oil sobrieties, contact lenses, cosmetics, drug delivery, tissue engineering, wound dressing, among others. This chapter provides general information on polymer gels, including definition, classification, preparation methods and applications. Keywords Gel applications · Hydrophilic polymer · Hydrophobic polymer · Swelling
4.1 Introduction Polymers are macromolecules made from small parts called monomers linked to each other. The behavior of the polymer depends on several factors as inter- and intramolecular interactions such as van Deer Waals forces, hydrophobic association, electrostatic interactions and hydrogen bonds (Zhang et al. 2015a, b). However, the hydrophobic interactions and the hydrogen bonds result in an efficient polymer- polymer attraction which causes the association between polymers (Dai et al. 2015). Polymers can be divided into biopolymers and synthetic polymers. The biopolymers are macromolecules manufactured by the living organisms such as cellulose, DNA, peptides, proteins, etc. (Wang and Heilshorn 2015). These biopolymers are responsible in the organism for performing biological functions such as homeostasis and molecular motions. The synthetic polymers are chemical compounds that are man-made such as
R. K. Farag (*) Department of Application, Egyptian Petroleum Research Institute (EPRI), Nasr City, Cairo, Egypt S. Hani Faculty of biotechnology, October University for Modern Science and Arts, Cairo, Egypt © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2020 T. J. Gutiérrez (ed.), Reactive and Functional Polymers Volume Two, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-45135-6_4
91
92
R. K. Farag and S. Hani
nylon, poly(acrylamide) (PAAm), poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG), poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC), etc., which are used in different industrial purposes (Chin et al. 2017). Crosslinked polymer gels are three-dimensional (3D) hydrophilic polymeric structures that can absorb huge volumes of water and other biological fluids and can even preserve them under pressure sometimes (Tomadoni et al. 2019). In addition, they have a high-water content, and with physical properties such as high flexibility similar to soft tissues. Crosslinked polymers are made to tolerate strong chemicals or eventually be disintegrated and dissolved (Peppas et al. 2000). The dissolution process can be carried out by altering the environmental conditions such as ionization of the solution, pH or temperature (Shimba et al. 2017).
4.1.1 Crosslinking Process Crosslinking is a process in polymer chemistry that results in a network structure that depends on a multidimensional extension of a chain polyme
Data Loading...
