Chemical structure and remarkably enhanced mechanical properties of chitosan-graft-poly(acrylic acid)/polyacrylamide double-network hydrogels

The novel double-network (DN) hydrogels were prepared using the chitosan-g-poly(acrylic acid) as the first network, and polyacrylamide as the second. The effects of the concentrations of the second network on chemical structure, intermolecular interactions and mechanical properties for the DN gels were investigated. The DN hydrogels had decreased swelling capacities and significantly improved glassy modulus and strength with the increase of the acrylamide concentration, owing to the enhanced intermolecular interaction and physical entanglement, and reduced molecular motion. It is worth noting that DN hydrogels with 5.50 mol/L acrylamide content had the greatest mechanical strength and still relatively high water content (~82 wt%), resulting from the effectiveness of the intermolecular penetration and intermolecular interactions between two independent polymer networks. Therefore, the reported novel chitosan-based DN hydrogels exhibit good potentials in some applications, for example biomedical engineering applications.