Structural, mechanical and osmotic properties of injectable hyaluronan-based composite hydrogels

✍ Scribed by Ferenc Horkay; Jules Magda; Mataz Alcoutlabi; Sarah Atzet; Thomas Zarembinski

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2010
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 451 KB
• Volume: 51
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0032-3861
• DOI: 10.1016/j.polymer.2010.06.027

✦ Synopsis

The osmotic and scattering properties of hyaluronan-based composite hydrogels composed of stiff biopolymer chains (carboxymethylated thiolated hyaluronan (CMHA-S)) crosslinked by a flexible polymer (polyethylene glycol diacrylate (PEGDA)) are investigated and analyzed in terms of the scaling theory. The total pre-gel polymer weight concentration is varied between 0.5 wt.% and 3.2 wt.%, while the mole ratio between the reactive PEG chain ends and the thiolated HA moieties is changed between 0.15 and 1.0. The shear modulus G of the fully-swollen gels exhibits a stronger dependence on pre-gel concentration than on the crosslink density. Osmotic deswelling measurements reveal that the osmotic mixing pressure depends on the weight ratio CMHA-S/PEGDA, and is practically unaffected by the pregel concentration. Small-angle neutron scattering observations indicate that the thermodynamic properties of these composite gels are governed by total polymer concentration, i.e., specific interactions between the two polymeric components do not play a significant role.