Abstract
Polymers are commonly used in medical device manufacturing, e.g. for drug delivery systems, bone substitutes and stent coatings. Especially hydrogels exhibit very promising properties in this field. Hence, the development of new hydrogel systems for customized application is of great interest, especially regarding the swelling behavior and mechanical properties as well as the biocompatibility. The aim of this work was the preparation and investigation of various polyelectrolyte and poly-ionic liquid based hydrogels accessible by radical polymerization. The obtained polymers were covalently crosslinked with N,N'-methylenebisacrylamide (MBAA) or different lengths of poly(ethyleneglycol)diacrylate (PEGDA). The effect of different crosslinker-to-monomer ratios has been examined. In addition to the compression curves and the maximum degree of swelling, the biocompatibility with L929 mouse fibroblasts of these materials was determined in direct cell seeding experiments and the outcome for the different hydrogels was compared.
Highlights
Since the 1960s, hydrogels are widely used in the medical and pharmaceutical industry as implants,[1] drug delivery-systems,[2,3] matrices for enzyme immobilization,[4] contact lens material,[5] tissue engineering and stent coatings.[6]
All hydrogels used in this study were synthesized by free radical polymerization starting from different monomers (Fig 1), using MBAA and PEGDA with various chain lengths as crosslinker and APS/TMEDA as initiator system
Hydrogel materials derived from ionic liquids were successfully synthesized by radical polymerization of electrolytes bearing a vinyl group using MBAA and PEGDA as crosslinkers
Summary
Since the 1960s, hydrogels are widely used in the medical and pharmaceutical industry as implants,[1] drug delivery-systems,[2,3] matrices for enzyme immobilization,[4] contact lens material,[5] tissue engineering and stent coatings.[6] Exploiting chemical and/or physical crosslinking enhances the mechanical properties such as stiffness, surface hardness, resilience to temperature and solvent attacks as well as swelling behavior.[7] hydrogels exhibit a variety of highly interesting properties such as outstanding biocompatibility, nontoxicity, biodegradability and a possible self-healing nature.[8,9] Those characteristics are frequently and broadly demanded and make such hydrogel based materials attractive for medical applications. A noticeable example was reported by Verma et al describing the use of self-expanding, hydrophilic osmotic hydrogels for eyeball reconstruction in anophthalmia, to prevent the deformation of the skull.[11] The dry gels absorb the surrounding tissue fluid, swell up to ten times of their initial volume and build up the necessary counterpressure within the skull.[12]
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