Document Type : Research Paper

Author

• Fateh Belkasem Eltaboni

Chemistry Department Faculty of Science University of Benghazi

Abstract

Because of its tunable physical and chemical properties, bio-polymeric hydrogels have attracted increasing attention in biomaterials research because they can be used as sustainable and bioactive matrix in many applications such as drug release and dye recovery. Three formulations of hydrogels (F1, F2 and F3) based gum Arabic (GA) with different content of potassium alum (PA) (0.0, 0.002 and 0.200 grams of PA, respectively) were prepared by using solution-casting technique. A combination of spectroscopic (UV & FTIR) and hygroscopic techniques were applied to investigate the effect of PA content on the physicochemical properties of prepared hydrogels. FTIR spectra confirmed that hydrogels were successfully blended. It was noted that with increasing content of alum the moisture and gel contents increased, while swelling ratio decreased specially at pH 11. The highest value of mechanical parameter (elongation) was determined for the hydrogel containing the maximum amount of PA, i.e. F3 (1202 %). Thus, it could be concluded that for this system the highest crosslinking density has been achieved.

Keywords

• critical association concentration
• moisture content
• gel content
• swelling ratio
• elongation

Main Subjects

• Physical Chemistry