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Reduced graphene oxide-modified polyvinyl alcohol hydrogel with potential application as skin wound dressings

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Abstract

Traditional wound dressings rarely participate in accelerating active wound healing by stimulating skin cells. The use of a conductive wound dressing to promote the activity of electrically responsive cells is an effective means of accelerating wound healing. This article is describing the synthesis of physical conductive hydrogel of polyvinyl alcohol/reduced graphene oxide (PVA/rGO), and the characteristics of these electroactive dressings are evaluated. The resulting hydrogel demonstrates a denser pore size compared to PVA with improved compressive strength of 32.5 kPa. The pore sizes of PVA/rGO range between 7–45 μm, an average porosity is about 20 ± 11%, the water uptake ratio of the PVA/rGO is 187% ± 60%, and the evaporation rate is about 2020 g/m2.day. Which makes it a desirable template for fibroblast cell culture and wound dressing application. The electrical conductivity of the hydrogel was in the range of 0.7 to 0.8 mS, which is comparable to the electrical conductivity of human skin to facilitate intercellular signaling and current transmission from external electrical stimuli causing cell growth. MTT assays confirmed that the resulting PVA/rGO hydrogel was non-toxic toward human fibroblast cells with antibacterial properties against E. coli. introducing it a good candidate for wound healing applications.

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Data Availability

All supporting the data are given in Table 1 and Fig. 10. The conductivity values of the samples are given in Table 1 and in Fig. 10, the supporting data for cell viability is shown related to the samples given in Figure 10. All statements have been presented based on the experiments and data shown in the manuscript.

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  1. Department of Polymer Engineering and Color Technology, Amirkabir University of Technology, Tehran, Iran

    Zahra Khodaee & Farhad Sharif

  2. New Technologies Research Center (NTRC), Amirkabir University of Technology, 424 Hafez Ave., Tehran, Iran

    Saeedeh Mazinani

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Khodaee, Z., Mazinani, S. & Sharif, F. Reduced graphene oxide-modified polyvinyl alcohol hydrogel with potential application as skin wound dressings. J Polym Res 30, 5 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10965-022-03384-w

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