Development of Potentially Biocompatible Hydrogels with Cylindrical Pores Prepared from Polyvinyl Alcohol and Low-Molecular Weight Polyacrylic Acid

Abstract

In the present work, blend hydrogels from PVA and twodifferent low PAA molecular weights, Mw 1800 g/mol and5000 g/mol were prepared through the freezing thawing(F-T) physical crosslinking method. The obtained materialswere fully characterized by means of scanning electronmicroscopy (SEM) in order to analyze their morphology,gel fraction (GF) to determine the crosslinking degree andFourier transformed infrared spectroscopy (FTIR) to analyzethe PVA-PAA interactions. Thermal characterizations [thermogravimetricanalysis (TGA) and dynamic scanning calorimetry(DSC)] were conducted to study the relevant thermalcharacteristics. Sorption tests at different pH values (4 and 7)obtained from different aqueous systems were also inquired.The effects of PAA contents (between 1 and 5 wt%) and Mwof the used PAA on the hydrogel final properties were analyzedand related to the most probably PVA-PAA interactions.