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Construction of chitin/graphene oxide hybrid hydrogels

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Abstract

Graphene oxide (GO), an excellent nanofiller, was incorporated into chitin to construct chitin/GO hybrid hydrogels by cross-linking with epichlorohydrin. The structure of the hybrid hydrogels was investigated by Fourier-transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy, wide-angle X-ray diffraction, thermogravimetric analysis, and scanning electron microscopy. The results revealed that the hybrid hydrogels possessed a layered porous structure with bi-crosslinked networks, which played an important role in improving their mechanical properties. Compared with pure chitin hydrogels, an increase of 24.7 and 262.7 % in strain and compressive strength, respectively, was achieved with addition of 3.2 wt% GO. Incorporation of this amount of GO in a hybrid hydrogel did not affect the toxicity of chitin towards L02 cells, suggesting good biocompatibility. All these results suggest that chitin/GO hydrogels have potential applications in the field of tissue engineering.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of New Textile Materials and Advanced Processing, Wuhan Textile University, Wuhan, 430073, China

    Yi Guo, Li Cui & Ping Zhu

  2. Department of Chemistry, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, China

    Bo Duan

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  1. Yi Guo
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  2. Bo Duan
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  3. Li Cui
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  4. Ping Zhu
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Correspondence to Yi Guo or Ping Zhu.

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Guo, Y., Duan, B., Cui, L. et al. Construction of chitin/graphene oxide hybrid hydrogels. Cellulose 22, 2035–2043 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-015-0630-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10570-015-0630-2

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