Preparation and swelling behavior of physically crosslinked hydrogels composed of poly(vinyl alcohol) and chitosan

Abstract

The physically crosslinked poly(vinyl alcohol)/chitosan (CS) composite hydrogels were prepared by cyclic freezing/thawing techniques, and the microstructure and swelling behavior of the hydrogels in the simulated gastric (pH 1.0) and intestinal (pH 7.4) media were investigated. The experimental results of infrared spectra (IR), scanning electron microscope (SEM) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) demonstrated that poly(vinyl alcohol) and chitosan had good miscibility in the composite hydrogels, and the addition of chitosan perturbed the formation of poly(vinyl alcohol) crystallites. The swelling kinetics results indicated that the composite hydrogels had good pH sensitive properties to the acidic environments, and with the increase of chitosan content in the blend, the maximum swelling degreed and the swelling rate both increased, but it led to more dissolution at pH 1.0. And the composite hydrogels also exhibited good reversible swelling behavior with pH value of the swelling medium altering between 1.0 and 7.4. In addition, the higher freezing/thawing cycle times resulted in the lower swelling rate. Therefore, the swelling behavior of the composite hydrogels could be adjusted by changing the chitosan contents and the freezing/thawing cycle times.