Thermal properties of hydrogel-clay nanocomposites

ROMINA OLLIER PRIMIANO; LAURA MABEL SANCHEZ; GONZALEZ, JIMENA S.; ALVAREZ, VERA A.

Advanced Materials Letters

VBRI PRESS AB

Año: 2018

0976-3961

Hydrogels are one of the most widely employed materials in biological, medical and technological areas. However, theuse of hydrogels sometimes is restricted due to their specific properties. It is well-known that polymeric nanocompositesreinforced with clays show valuable improvements in their properties. In this work, eco-friendly composite hydrogelswere prepared employing polyvinylalcohol (PVA) and bentonite (abundant and low cost smectite-type clay in Argentina)as raw materials through the previously optimized freezing-thawing (F-T) crosslinking method. Different nanocompositehydrogels were obtained by varying the corresponding reactor feed. These materials have been recently chemically,morphologically and mechanically analysed in a recent work. Specifically, in the present work, thermal degradationbehaviour of PVA-bentonite hydrogels was studied. Kinetic analytical models were applied to non-isothermalthermogravimetric (TGA) measurements trying to identify the possible mechanism for PVA degradation in the presenceof bentonite