'COATING RETICULATED POLYURETHANE FOAMS WITH CROSS-LINKED PVA HYDROGEL PREPARED BY GAMMA IRRADIATION'

DELGADO, JUAN F.; MIRNA LORENA SANCHEZ; GRASSELLI, M.; CLAUDIA GIMENEZ; LEANDRO J MARTINEZ

Moscu

Simposio; IRaP 2018 Ionizing Radiation and Polymers symposium; 2018

IRaP

Polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) is PVA is a widely used synthetic hydrophilic polymer with excellent film-forming properties and good flexibility. In addition, it is water-soluble and inexpensive. In this work, PVA is used to prepare a functional hydrogel layer on reticulated polyurethane foam (rPUF). rPUF provides physical rigidity through its macroscopic structure, whereas the hydrogel layer provides capacity to adsorb proteins by specific interactions. The hydrogel coating process was performed by the dip-coating method, using a PVA solution. The PVA hydrogel was linked to the rPUF material by using a radiation-induced crosslinking process in aqueous ethanol solution. The ethanol in the solvent mixture allowed a balance between PVA swelling and PVA dissolution during the irradiation step. The resulting material showed higher thermal stability than the non-irradiated one. In addition, a simultaneous radiation-induced grafting polymerization (SRIGP) was done by simple addition of glycidyl methacrylate monomer into the irradiation solution. In a further step, sulfonic ligands were included specifically in the hydrogel layer, which contained around 200% of PVA respect to the original rPUF. Materials were characterized by FT-IR, thermogravimetric analysis, SEM microscopy and EDX analysis.