Adding Chemical Cross-Links to a Physical Hydrogel

Molecules

Gaio Paradossi¹  Ivana Finelli¹  Barbara Cerroni¹ 

[1] Dipartimento di Scienze e Tecnologie Chimiche, Università di Roma Tor Vergata and CNR – SOFT, Italy

关键词: hydrogels;    swelling;    biocompatibility;    polysaccharides;   

DOI  :  10.3390/molecules14093662

来源: mdpi

【 摘 要 】

Synergistic hydrogels are often encountered in polysaccharide mixtures widely used in food and biopharma products. The xanthan and konjac glucomannan pair provides one of the most studied synergistic hydrogels. Recently we showed that the junction zones stabilizing the 3D structure of this gel are present as macromolecular complexes in solution formed by the partially depolymerised polysaccharidic chains. The non-covalent interactions stabilizing the structure of the polysaccharidic complex cause the melting of the ordered structure of the complex in the solution and of the hydrogels. Introduction of chemical cross-links in the 3D structure of the synergistic hydrogel removes this behaviour, adding new features to the swelling and to the viscoelastic properties of the cured hydrogel. The use of epichlorohydrin as low molecular weight cross-linker does not impact unfavourably on the viability of NIH 3T3 fibroblasts.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY) which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.