Morphogical and swelling properties of porous hydrogels based on poly(hydroxyethyl methacrylate) and chitosan modulated
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ORIGINAL PAPER
Morphogical and swelling properties of porous hydrogels based on poly(hydroxyethyl methacrylate) and chitosan modulated by ice-templating process and porogen leaching Maria Valentina Dinu & Martin Přádný & Ecaterina Stela Drăgan & Jiří Michálek
Received: 15 August 2013 / Accepted: 29 September 2013 / Published online: 8 October 2013 # Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013
Abstract A comparative evaluation of the morphological and swelling properties corresponding to the porous poly(2hydroxyethyl methacrylate) (PHEMA) hydrogels and to the chitosan (CS) hydrogels was developed in this paper. The porous structure of hydrogels based on PHEMA or CS was tailored by ice-templating process and porogen leaching. Poly(methylmethacrylate) (PMMA), as fractionated particles, was used as polymer porogen. The influence of the average size of the fractionated PMMA particles on the internal morphology and swelling properties of the hydrogels was followed. The average pore diameter of PHEMA cryogels increased from 10±2 μm up to 22±5 μm with the increase of the size of the fractionated PMMA particles from below 32 μm up to 50– 90 μm. On the other hand, in the case of CS cryogels prepared in the presence of the PMMA particles with different sizes, pores with an average size of 74±6 μm, irrespective of the size of PMMA particles were formed, strong changes being observed in the morphology of the pore walls, these being less compact and, therefore, more accessible for the diffusion of low molecular weight species. Hydrogels based on PHEMA or CS with microchanneled structures arranged along the freezing direction, were generated by unidirectional freezing. The swelling measurements showed that the cryogels prepared in the presence of PMMA particles attained the equilibrium swelling much faster than those prepared without PMMA.
M. V. Dinu : E. S. Drăgan (*) „Petru Poni“ Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry of Romanian Academy, Grigore Ghica Voda Alley 41 A, 700487 Iasi, Romania e-mail: [email protected] M. Přádný : J. Michálek Institute of Macromolecular Chemistry, Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, 162 06 Prague 6, Czech Republic
Keywords Chitosan . Morphology . Poly(hydroxyethyl methacrylate) . Porous hydrogels . Swelling
Introduction Porous hydrogels with controlled morphology and swelling properties have attracted considerable interest, especially in biomedical and pharmaceutical fields [1]. Porous hydrogels based on poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate) (PHEMA) are highly biocompatible and have been used for a variety of applications including soft contact lenses [2, 3], devices for controlled delivery of drugs and proteins [4–8], matrices for the immobilization and separations of molecules and cells [8–10], and scaffolds for skeletal or cardiac tissue engineering [11, 12]. On the other hand, porous chitosan (CS) scaffolds for soft tissue engineering have been also reported [13, 14]. Porous hydrogels can be designed by various methods, such as: polymerization-induced phase separation [15], porogen le
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