Author: Simranjeet Khatrao
Khatrao, Simranjeet, 2017 TOUGHENED HYDROGELS FOR BIOMEDICAL APPLICATION , Flinders University, School of Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematics
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Hydrogels are the three-dimensional polymer structure. The keen interest in the hydrogel is due to their properties like good water swelling, porous structure, biocompatibility and many more. For these reasons hydrogel has a huge scope in biomedical field. At present, the hydrogel used does not fullfil the demand up to its capabilities. The reason behind that is its poor mechanical properties. As the commonly used hydrogel (Poly (acrylic acid)), PAA has very weak mechanical properties. Therefore, there is great need to provide toughness to the conventional hydrogel so that its range of applications can be extended. The toughness is provided by the hyperbranched polymer (HB) to the conventional hydrogel.
In this thesis, the toughness is provided to the conventional hydrogel and then the mechanical testing is performed to verify this and to see the difference between both the hydrogels. Apart from the mechanical behaviour, other properties were also studied in the thesis.
In this thesis, various experiments were performed such tensile testing, double peeling, water swelling test, FTIR and SEM. The properties of the hydrogel have improved by providing the enhancement to the conventional hydrogel in form of the hyperbranched polymer (HB). According to the experiments the PAA-HB hydrogel or the toughened hydrogel has the fracture toughness of 38.7 J as compared to the 8.25 J fracture toughness of the PAA i.e. conventional hydrogel.
Keywords: Hydrogel, toughness, mechanical properties, PAA and hyperbranched polymer (HB).
Subject: Engineering thesis
Thesis type: Masters
Completed: 2017
School: School of Computer Science, Engineering and Mathematics
Supervisor: Dr. Youhong Tang