Synthesis and characterization of porous co-polymeric hydrogels of 2-Hydroxyethyl methacrylate and N-vinyl pyrrolidone via high internal phase emulsion

Abstract

Porous polymeric materials (poly HIPEs) have attracted considerable attention in many fields focused on biomaterial applications. In this research, co-polymeric hydrogels of poly (HEMA-co-NVP) were synthesized in the emulsion phase. Poly (HEMA-co-NVP) poly HIPE was produced by co-polymerization of 2-Hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA) and N-vinylpyrrolidone (NVP) in the presence of N, N-methylene bisacrylamide (MBA as cross-linker), and initiation of ammonium persulfate (APS) and N, N, N, N-tetramethylene diamine (TEMED). The co-polymerization was based on the free-radical polymerization method by employing two immiscible liquids in the poly HIPE method. The characterization of the poly HIPE-based co-polymer was done by Fourier transforms infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and thermogravimetric analysis (TGA). The optimization process was done by measuring the water absorption and the best amount was kept stable in each stage. The highest water absorption value of synthetic porous hydrogel synthesized in the HIPEs method was 8.9 g/g with average pores of 2-5 μm, while its synthetic hydrogel with the same values of reactants and without HIPEs method was 1.2 g/g. These results show that the poly HIPE-based polymerization of co-polymers can be intended to raise their water uptake.

Keywords

• poly hipe
• hydrogel
• water swelling
• emulsion-templating
• 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate
• n-vinylpyrrolidone