Author(s)

Refat Hassan, Fahd Tirkistani, Ishaq Zaafarany, Ahmed Fawzy, Mohamed Khairy, Sayed Iqbal

Chemistry Department, Faculty of Applied Sciences, Umm Al-Qura University, Makkah, KSA.
Chemistry Department, Faculty of Science, Assiut University, Assiut, Egypt.
Chemistry Department, Faculty of Science, Benha University, Benha, Egypt.
Chemistry Department, Saifia College of Science and Education, Bhopal, India.

The change in rheological and mechanical properties for some ionotropic cross-linked metal-alginate hydrogel complexes in particularly copper-alginate membranes in the presence of some organic solvents (benzene, toluene, xylene, carbon tetrachloride, ace-tone, chloroform, dichloroethane, isobutyl alcohol and ethyl alcohol) or buffer solutions (acetates, borates and universal buffers) have been investigated. The experimental results showed a remarkable tendency of the studied hydrogels for shrinking in polar solvents, whereas no influence was observed for the hydrogels in non-polar solvents. On the other hand, the gels were found to swell or shrink in the buffer solutions depending on the pH of the buffer used. The swelling extent for hydrogel spheres was found to decrease in the order Cu > Ba ≈ Ca > Zn > Pb-alginates in universal buffers of pH = 5.33. The factors affected this behavior have been examined and discussed.

Biomaterials; Hydrogels; Swelling; Shrinking; Metal-Alginates; Biocatalysts

Hassan, R. , Tirkistani, F. , Zaafarany, I. , Fawzy, A. , Khairy, M. and Iqbal, S. (2012) Polymeric biomaterial hydrogels. I. Behavior of some ionotropic cross-linked metal-alginate hydrogels especially copper-alginate membranes in some organic solvents and buffer solutions. Advances in Bioscience and Biotechnology, 3, 845-854. doi: 10.4236/abb.2012.37105.