Chemical Pathways to Electrically Conductive Hemicellulose Hydrogels

Sammanfattning: Hydrogels have been extensively explored and are widely used in diverse biomedical applications, such as scaffolds for tissue engineering and vehicles for drug delivery. As one type of important natural polymer-based hydrogel, hemicellulose hydrogels have interesting attributes, including being renewable, non-toxic, biocompatible, biodegradable, and abundantly available. A prominent way to extend their potential is by combining them with desirable properties from other materials. The focus of this thesis is to develop a new family of electrically conductive hemicellulose-based hydrogels (ECHHs) using O-acetyl-galactoglucomannan (AcGGM) and aniline oligomers through different chemical pathways.A first approach to synthesize the ECHHs includes two steps: first, carboxylated AcGGM (C-AcGGM) is dissolved with glycidyl methacrylate, followed by polymerization initiated by ammonium persulfate; second, the resulting hydrogels are covalently coupled to varying amounts of aniline tetramer (AT), which is homogeneously distributed throughout the network. The swelling ratios of C-AcGGM hydrogels decrease as the degree of substitution of maleic anhydride increases. The swelling ratios and conductivities of ECHHs are tuned by the AT content.To develop a simpler and greener approach to synthesize ECHHs under ambient conditions, AcGGM is in-situ cross-linked in the presence of aniline pentamer (AP) in basic water. Hydrogel equilibrium swelling ratios (ESRs) vary from 12.7 to 10.4, regulated by cross-linker concentration. The ESRs are also tuned from 9.6 to 6.0 by changing the AP contents from 10 % (w/w) to 40 % (w/w) while simultaneously altering conductivities from 9.05×10-9 to 1.58×10-6 S/cm.ECHHs with controllable conductivity, tunable swelling behavior and acceptable mechanical properties extend the applications of hemicellulose to include e.g. biosensors and electronic devices.