Development of eco-compatible polyvinyl alcohol/polyacrylic acid blend hydrogels

LAURA SANCHEZ; VERA A. ALVAREZ

Mar del Plata

Simposio; XVI Simposio Latinoamericano de Polímeros (SLAP 2018) y el XIV Congreso Iberoamericano de Polímeros (CIP 2018); 2018

Smart or intelligent materials have the capability to change their dimension or physical properties according to a certain stimuli. For pH-sensitive hydrogels preparation several research works have employed polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and polyacrylic acid (PAA) as starting materials. PVA is a hydrophilic, relatively inert and ease-to processing polymer, while PAA is not only a hydrophilic and biocompatible polymer, it also has a polyanionic structure whose pKa is found between 4.5 and 5.01. In the present work we obtain and characterize blend hydrogels from PVA and two PAA with different low molecular weights (Mw 1800 g/mol and 5000 g/mol) through the formation of crystallites by freezing thawing (F-T) physical crosslinking method. The advantages offered by physical crosslinking methods are related to obtain low-cost, environmental-friendly and low-toxicity hydrogels. The effect of PAA contents and Mw on the final properties is exhaustively studied