Abstract
Nanocomposites of poly(glycidyl methacrylate) and bacterial cellulose (BC), or poly(poly(ethylene glycol) methacrylate) and BC were produced via the in-situ polymerization of methacrylic monomers, inside the BC 3D network. The nanocomposites surface properties were evaluated by inverse gas chromatography (IGC). The dispersive component of surface energy (γsd) varied between 35.64 - 83.05 mJ m−2 at 25 °C. The surface of the different nanocomposites has a predominant basic character (Kb/Ka = 4.20-4.31). Higher specific interactions with polar probes were found for the nanocomposite bearing pendant epoxide groups, that apart from the low surface area (SBET = 0.83 m2 g−1) and monolayer capacity (nm = 2.18 μmol g−1), exhibits a high value of γsd (88.19 mJ m−2 at 20 °C). These results confirm the potential of IGC to differentiate between nanocomposites with different surface functional groups and to predict their potential interactions with living tissues, body fluids and other materials.
Highlights
The design of functional, nanostructured and high-performance composite materials based on bacterial cellulose (BC), i.e. an extracellular form of nanocellulose produced by non-pathogenic bacteria that presents remarkable properties, is of utmost importance for myriad applications in the biomedical and pharmaceutical fields (Silvestre, Freire, & Neto, 2014; Ullah, Santos et al, 2016; Ullah, Wahid et al, 2016)
poly(glycidyl methacrylate) (PGMA) was synthesized in the presence or absence of cross-linker to assess the influence of using a cross-linked and non-cross-linked matrix on the surface properties of the corresponding nanocomposites
The whitish and opaque PGMA/BC nanocomposites are composed of 61 wt.% (PGMA/BC) and 67 wt.% (PGMA-MBA/BC) of PGMA, while the yellowish and translucent poly(poly(ethylene glycol) methacrylate) (PPEGMA)/BC nanocomposite contains 87 wt.% of PPEGMA (Table 1)
Summary
The design of functional, nanostructured and high-performance composite materials based on bacterial cellulose (BC), i.e. an extracellular form of nanocellulose produced by non-pathogenic bacteria that presents remarkable properties, is of utmost importance for myriad applications in the biomedical and pharmaceutical fields (Silvestre, Freire, & Neto, 2014; Ullah, Santos et al, 2016; Ullah, Wahid et al, 2016). One of the methodologies that is gaining a lot of attention to prepare BC-based nanocomposites, due to its simplicity, is the socalled in-situ polymerization of functional monomers within the BC porous network that originates materials with interesting properties for application as, for instance, stimuli-responsive nanocomposites for drug delivery (Saïdi, Vilela, Oliveira, Silvestre, & Freire, 2017), antimicrobial hydrogels (Figueiredo et al, 2015) and ion exchange membranes for fuel cells (Gadim et al, 2014). 2010; Figueiredo et al, 2013, 2015; Hobzova, DuskovaSmrckova, Michalek, Karpushkin, & Gatenholm, 2012; Saïdi et al, 2017; Vilela, Gadim, Silvestre, Freire, & Figueiredo, 2016, 2017), and with other monomer types (Mashkour, Rahimnejad, & Mashkour, 2016; Gadim et al, 2014) The incorporation of these polymers within the BC porous structure generates nanostructured materials with different mechanical, thermal, viscoelastic, optical and surface properties. The simultaneous measurement of physical and chemical properties by IGC allows to
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