Abstract
The main objective of the paper was to prepare eco-friendly chiral hydrogels from chitosan and betulinic aldehyde under ultrasonic radiation effect, targeting their use for enantiomeric separations. This strategy promoted the obtaining of the hydrogels by supramoleclar organization of the imine units bonding the betuline skeleton with chitosan into ordered clusteres, while not altering the physico-chemical properties of the reagents. FTIR, SEM, CD spectroscopy and POM techniques were used to prove the pelicularities of the hydrogelation mechanism under the ultrasonication. The stability of the hydrogels was investigated by monitoring the influence of the swelling in three media of diferent pH, by POM and CD. It was concluded that the chiral hydrogels prepared by ultrasonication are stable when the pH vary from acidic to basic, indicating the new synthetic approach as a valuable method to yield suitable materials for enatiomeric separations in medical field.
Highlights
Chitosan is a polysaccharide obtained by deacetylation of chitin, one of the most naturally occurring biopolymers in nature and display several excellent properties such as biocompatibility, biodegradability, antifungal, antiviral, antibacterial as well as ability to form hydrogels, films or fibers
The use of different covalent crosslinkers to obtain chitosan hydrogels lead to different materials with improved properties, but over time they proved worse biocompatibility or biodegradability compared to the pristine chitosan
Chiral hydrogels were obtained by condensation reaction of chitosan with betulinic aldehyde using the ultrasonic radiation (Scheme 1)
Summary
Chitosan is a polysaccharide obtained by deacetylation of chitin, one of the most naturally occurring biopolymers in nature and display several excellent properties such as biocompatibility, biodegradability, antifungal, antiviral, antibacterial as well as ability to form hydrogels, films or fibers Due to these benefic properties, chitosan kept a great potential for many applications in fields such as biomedicine, agriculture, food, waste water treatment, cosmetics, textile industries and so on [1]. The use of different covalent crosslinkers to obtain chitosan hydrogels lead to different materials with improved properties, but over time they proved worse biocompatibility or biodegradability compared to the pristine chitosan. This is not acceptable for biomedical applications which require biomaterials without traces of organic solvent, acids or chemical reagents, which can inflict citotxicity and biocompatibility loss [3-5]. By varying the crosslinking ratio and the reaction conditions (temperature, gelation time and stirring velocity) it was possible to control the physico-chemical
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