In recent years, hydrogels with self-healing properties have
attracted significant attention from material scientists, likely due to their
wide range of applications across diverse fields. These include wearable and
flexible devices, electronic skin, biomedicine, tissue engineering, cell
therapy, wound dressing, and more. This chapter describes the synthesis,
characterisation, and self-healing properties of a hydrogel, composed of poly
(acrylamide –co- vinyl-imidazole) and carboxymethyl, designated as ‘Solid
Hydrogel Electrolyte’ (SHE). The SHE was prepared by carrying out free radical
polymerisation of monomers AAm and VI in the presence of dissolved CMC in an
aqueous medium using KPS as a thermal initiator. The SHE was characterised by
FTIR, XRD, SEM and TGA analysis. The absorption bands at 1497 and 1544 cm-1
were obtained due to N–C and C–C stretching vibration of the VI chain. The
bands at 760 and 660 cm-1 showed C–H ring bending vibration and C–N vibration
of azole ring, respectively. The band at 1060 cm-1 was due to CH-O-CH2
stretching of CMC. The surface texture, as revealed by SEM analysis, was
observed to be smooth. The XRD pattern contains a sharp peak at 20.43 degrees,
attributed to the crystallinity of the polymer owing to the presence of galactose
units that form a crystalline region due to the H-bonded arrangement of these
units. In addition, a small shoulder between 35o and 45o suggests the amorphous
nature of CMC also. The kinetic water uptake study, carried out in the medium
of pH 1.0, 6.8 and 7.4, was best interpreted by the ‘Power function model’
which revealed the ‘swelling exponent’ (n) in the range of 0.5 to 0,.7, thus
indicating a chain relaxation controlled swelling mechanism. The hydrogel
electrolyte exhibited pH-dependent swelling behaviour with per cent equilibrium
swelling (PES) of 5170, 1892 and 5163 in the swelling media of pH 1.0, 5.6 and
13.0, respectively. The SHE showed the self-healing property, which was
confirmed by the “LED glowing” experiment. As compared to its original elongation
of 200 %, the self-healed hydrogel exhibited an elongation of 157 %, thus
showing restoration tendency.
Author(s) Details
Deepika Dubey
Polymer Research Laboratory, Department of Chemistry, Govt. Model Science
College, Jabalpur (M.P.)-482001, India.
S. K. Bajpai
Polymer Research Laboratory, Department of Chemistry, Govt. Model Science
College, Jabalpur (M.P.)-482001, India.
M. Bajpai
Polymer Research Laboratory, Department of Chemistry, Govt. Model Science
College, Jabalpur (M.P.)-482001, India.
Please see the book here :- https://doi.org/10.9734/bpi/cmsrf/v6/7030
