Poly(vinylalcohol) ferrogels from chemical crosslinking and freezing-thawing

JIMENA SOLEDAD GONZALEZ; CRISTINA HOPPE; VERA ALEJANDRA ALVAREZ

Conferencia; 6th International ECNP Conference on Nanostructured Polymers and Nanocomposites; 2010

Ferrogels are a new class of polymeric materials whose properties can be controlled by the application of a magnetic field. The magneto-elastic properties of such gels give them the potential use as biomembranes, biomedical materials, biosensors, artificial muscles and mainly as matrices for drug delivery. Stimuli-responsive controlled release drug from polymeric devices has been received great attention, as it provides advantages such as better delivery efficiency and site-specific therapy over the conventional routes of drug delivery. Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) is an hydrophilic polymer from which biocompatible and biodegradable high strength hydrogels can be obtained. This polymer can be crosslinking in several way such as chemically (by using a crosslinking agent, for example glutaraldheyde, GA) or physically (by freezing-thawing, F-T, cycles). The main objective of this work was to synthesize and characterize ferrogels for biomedical applications from PVA and magnetic nanoparticles (NPs) “in-situ” generated, trying to find the effect of crosslinking type and nanoparticles content on the thermal, magnetic and mechanical properties.