STUDIES ON HYDROGELS BASED ON POLYACRYLAMIDE AND GUAR GUM DERIVATIVES

Abstract

As we all know the importance of green chemistry synthesis and characterization of environmental friendly modified natural polymers is need of time. These natural polysaccharides also eliminates the danger to health and environment. Guar gum is one of the important naturally occurring polymer having wide applications due to its rheological modifying properties in medicinal, pharmaceutical, food, textile and scores of other industrial and commercial sectors. There has been wide study on physiochemical and pharmaceutical properties of guar gum but study on modified guar gum and its derivatives are quite lacking. Unmodified guar gum has certain drawbacks like lack of clarity and free flowing properties, fall in viscosity and turbidity on prolong stay, etc. These draw backs can be overcome by modifying and derivatization of guar gum and can be used in multidiscipline fields. In this work we are preparing blend biodegradable interpenetrating polymer networks(IPNs) hydrogels using polymers both from natural sources and synthetic ones i.e Carboxymethyl guar gum along with Polyacrylamide with varying concentrations of carboxymethyl guargum and evaluate their properties, characteristics and their potential applications in different areas of biomedical and pharmaceutical applications. Characterization of synthesized hydrogels is carried out using different characterization techniques like FTIR & SEM. Other studies such as swelling studies and their physical properties like compression strength using UTM have also been evaluated. The blend hydrogels also exhibited the improved mechanical properties compared to those of homopolymers. The Carboxymethylated Guar Gum/Polyacrylamide blended hydrogels with the capacity of absorbing a high amount of water is also evaluated for its drug release profile at different pH. The drug used in this study was the ciprofloxacin hydrochloride. Release kinetics of ciprofloxacin hydrochloride from swollen polyacrylamide/carboxymethyl guargum cross-linked hydrogels in aqueous media have been successfully studied.