A Review on the Preparation, Characterization and Application of Stimuli-Responsive Interpenetrating Polymer Network

摘要

Numerous studies have been conducted on the stimuli-sensitive hydrogels that are able to respond to the changes in environmental conditions such as pH, temperature, light, ionic strength, and electromagnetic field. Due to their extreme swelling and syneresis in response to environmental stimuli, these polymeric hydrogels have been investigated for many technological biomedical and pharmaceutical applications in both in vitro and in vivo conditions. The stimuli responsive hydrogels or microgels with interpenetrating polymer network (IPN) structure have attracted great interest because each network can retain its individual property due to the absence of chemical bonding while the interpenetration of two networks can lead to much higher mechanical strength compared to a single homopolymer hydrogel network. The nature of components, degree of association and synthesis techniques influence the uttimate properties, swelling behavior and applications of IPN hydrogels. Particularly synthetic polymers derived from methacrylic acid (MAA),acrylic acid (AA), aspertic acid (AsP), itaconic acid (IA), N-isopropyl acrylamide (NIPAM), vinyl alcohol (PVA), ethylene oxide (EO), acrylamide (AAm), N-vinyl pyrrolidone (VP) and natural polysaccharides as cellulose, gellan gum (GG) chitosan, sodium alginate (SA), amino acids, have been used most to prepare IPNs.