Biocompatible Swelling Textile Structure Reinforced Hydrogels with High Toughness and Stiffness

Abstract

In the present work, a toughness hydrogel was manufactured by introducing kapok/PET assembly into single network of polyacrylamide hydrogels. The textile reinforced hydrogels (TRH) exhibits apparently higher young modulus than PAAM hydrogel. The normal strength of TRH was six-times higher than that of PAAM hydrogel when it was compressed at 40%. In addition, the swelling ability of TRH in x-y planar direction was largely suppressed, with only a 6.25% increase in the edge length. It was significantly lower than the swelling ability of PAAM hydrogel, which was high to 62.5%. While in the z direction, the swelling ability of TRH was much improved if compared with that of PAAM hydrogel, indicating the anisotropy in swelling properties of TRH. Besides, although the solution absorption ability of TRH was clearly decreased because of the suppress of kapok/PET assembly, the TRH and PAAM hydrogel depicted approximately the same swelling behaviour in the initial 8 hours of absorption from totally dry state.