Morphology assessment of poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate) hydrogels using multivariate analysis of viscoelastic and swelling properties

作者：Karpushkin Evgeny^*; Bogomolov Andrey

来源：Polymer, 2015, 58: 222-229.

DOI：10.1016/j.polymer.2014.11.039

• Hydrogel
• Phase separation
• Variable selection

Porous swollen hydrogels are unique materials that are specifically important for biomedical and chromatography applications. Direct analysis of their utilitarian properties, i.e. cell viability and growth, is time-consuming and hardly suited for routine testing of materials under development. Microscopy is an alternative method to assess the hydrogels porosity which is the main quality attribute of the material. However, spatial resolution of light microscopy may be insufficient, and scanning electron microscopic images are often subject to artifacts.
In this work a designed representative set of poly(2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate) hydrogel samples having widely varying morphological properties were analyzed using a number of laboratory techniques. Exploratory data analysis has allowed explaining the effects experimental conditions on the resulting hydrogels structure. Principal component analysis has been applied to select an optimal set of analytical variables that are suitable for the reliable material screening. We have proved that the method based on the analysis of the hydrogels swelling and mechanical behavior is capable of distinguishing the most valuable hydrogels with interconnected macropores from other morphological forms.

• 出版日期2015-2-10