Swelling In Fig

3.4. Swelling behavior

The swelling behavior of the DCMC crosslinked gelatin-PEG composite hydrogel fibers is studied and presented in Fig. 3. It shows that the equilibrium swelling ratio of the hydrogel fibers is very high, which is found to be between 89 and 93%. The result indicates that the hydrogel fibers are effective biomaterials for using as wound dressings since they can absorb wound exudates and provide moist environment for wound leading to acceleration of wound healing. The water in hydrogel can be divided into bound water, half-bound water and free water. The quantity of bound water and half-bound water is connected with the number of hydrophilic groups in hydrogel while the content of free water is connected with the three-dimensional

4. The water transport in the hydrogel, in particular, is closely related to the free water content. In the hydrogel, the free water is different from bound water and half-bound water, which has a very high degree of freedom and easy to be lost. Fig. 4 shows that the decrease in weight is nearly linear with time up to 4 h and thereafter does not change significantly. Evaporative water loss is about 85% within 10 h. The results show that the DCMC crosslinked gelatin-PEG composite hydrogel fibers have strong ability to absorb free water due to the three-dimensional structure and porous networks. Note that GeP-D1000 has the lowest weight remaining while GeP-D50 has the highest value. The result indicates that GeP-D1000 has more porous network structures to hold free water while GeP-D50 is much more

Dialdehyde carboxymethyl cellulose (DCMC) was used as the crosslinking reagent to fix the composite hydrogel fibers. The results indicate that the mechanical properties, enzymatic stability and blood compatibility of the composite hydrogel fibers are efficiently improved due to the addition of DCMC. The hydrogel fibers are effective biomaterials for using as wound dressings since they can absorb wound exudates and provide moist environment. Moreover, the composite hydrogel fibers present low cytotoxicity. The study indicates that DCMC is an effective crosslinking reagent for biomaterials fixation. The DCMC crosslinked gelatin-PEG composite hydrogel fibers can be well-suited for biomedical applications such as wound