In-situ Monitoring of Gelation Reactions through Single-Wavelength UV Absorbance

GARCIA, VALERIA S.; CLEMENTI, LUIS; GONZALEZ, VERÓNICA D.G.; GUGLIOTTA, LUIS M.

Santa Fe

Simposio; XI Simposio Argentino de Polímeros; 2015

Comité Organizador SAP 2015

Hydrogels are highly crosslinked hydrophilic polymers able to incorporate large amounts of water into its porous structure and with the ability of changing its tridimensional structure as a response to several external stimuli, as: pH and composition of the medium, temperature, electric field, among others. As a consequence, hydrogels have found applications in several fields as intelligent materials, for example, in medicine as drug delivery systems.Several methods have been proposed for on-line characterization of hydrogels. However, most of them involve complicated techniques and/or high-cost equipment as multiangle light scattering or refractometer equipments.In this paper, a simple UV absorbance measurement was utilized for in-situ monitoring of the gelation process for the synthesis of N,N-dimethylacrylamide hydrogels. The proposed technique was evaluated for different gelation processes involving different solid contents and crosslinker concentration. Results show that UV absorbance measurements can be utilized for monitoring of conversion and crosslinking degree along the gelation process.