Curing kinetics of the synthesis of poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate) (PHEMA) with ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA) as a crosslinking agent

Crosslinking Metal Nanoparticles into the Polymer Backbone of Hydrogels Enables Preparation of Soft, Magnetic Field‐Driven Actuators with Muscle‐Like Flexibility

“…To facilitate anisotropic elongation and contraction effects, the mold was equipped with removable stainless steel fillers 4 mm in diameter. Suitable hydrogels were prepared with 0.1 wt% EGDMA (polymer crosslinker; wt% crosslinker in total polymer), an initial water content of 75 wt% with respect to the total mass,14, 17, 35, 40 and up to 60 wt% nanomagnets (wt% polymer mass). The deep‐black hydrogels showed no visible structuring, indicating that the cobalt nanoparticles were well distributed within the hydrogel matrix (Figure 4a).…”

“…Unfortunately, the leading candidates metallic cobalt26, 27 or iron28, 29 would combine the highest saturation magnetization and high density but their instability as small particles (oxidation by air or solvents; pyrogenicity) has promoted the dominant use of magnetite30, 31 (Fe 3 O 4 ) in the current magnetic composite development. Both polymer‐ or surfactant‐coated magnetic materials28, 32–34 have been successfully embedded in polymers using suspension, emulsion, or precipitation polymerization 28, 35. High particle loading, however, remains in direct competition with an unwanted increase in brittleness and accompanying loss of functionality.…”

Effects of experimental variables on the synthesis of porous matrices

“…Also, as can be seen from Table I, a decrease in A 1635 cmϪ1 /A 1730 cmϪ1 value with an increase in temperature would promote a higher double-bond conversion. 11,13 …”

Influence of the ionic character of a drug on its release rate from hydrogels based on 2-hydroxyethylmethacrylate and acrylamide synthesized by photopolymerization

“…Its water swelling properties are improved by co-polymerization with more hydrophilic monomers [7,[9][10]. Hydrogels may be synthesized via various polymerization techniques, such as thermal polymerization [11], oxidation-reduction (redox) polymerization [12] and photopolymerization [13][14]. Photopolymerization has several advantages over conventional polymerization techniques.…”

“…One major advantage of photopolymerization is that hydrogels can be synthesized in the presence of an active principle, facilitating the incorporation of drugs during the synthesis of the hydrogels. Photopolymerization has been employed to obtain hydrogels for drug delivery applications using a variety of mono functional monomers such as HEMA [7][8][9][10][11][12]15], and crosslinkers such as poly (ethylene glycol) dimethacrylate [16], and poly(ethylene glycol) diacrylate [17]. The co-polymerization of HEMA, acrylamide (AAm) and a suitable crosslinker provides a unique combination of properties of the resulting hydrogels, making them capable of swelling especially at high pH values [18][19].…”