Effects of microstructural parameters on phase transition temperature of hydrogels in chemo-mechanical coupling fields

摘要

The stability of hydrogels can be considered as the stability of polymer networks of-the gels.The external environment can lead to the change of the polymer networks stability and the phase transition of hydrogels occurs.In this paper,a new free density energy function considering the chain entanglements and functionality of junctions is presented via combining Gent hyperelastic model and Edwards-Vilgis slip-link model with Flory-Huggins theory.A numerical method is developed to solve the phase transition temperature of the hydrogels based on the given new free energy function.Influences of four microstructure parameters on phase transition temperature of hydrogels are investigated by taking PNIPAM hydrogel as an example.Analytical results show that the microstructure parameters might affect the phase transition of the hydrogels significantly.