Temperature-dependent property development in hydrogels derived from hydroxypropylcellulose

Hydrogels constitute an important class of responsive materials that are employed in numerous biomedical and personal-care applications, most notably of which are controlled drug delivery, separations and superabsorbency. Since aqueous hydroxypropylcellulose (HPC) solutions exhibit lower critical solution behavior, hydrogels produced from this cellulose ether are temperature-responsive, swelling at low temperatures and contracting at high temperatures. If HPC hydrogels are synthesized at temperatures in the single-phase regime, they remain nonporous, whereas those crosslinked in the biphasic regime become microporous. In this work, we employ the modified temperature-induced phase separation (TIPS) protocol to generate nonporous and microporous HPC hydrogels crosslinked at different temperatures. The dynamic mechanical properties and swelling capacities of these hydrogels are reported as functions of crosslinking temperature.