Swelling of a N-isopropyl acrylamide hydrogel in two aqueous/organic two-phase systems

Hydrogels are crosslinked macromolecules (polymer networks) with segments of hydrophilic groups. Such polymer networks are able to swell as well as to shrink in liquid phases. This paper reports experimental results for the swelling behavior of a nonionic, synthetic hydrogel of N-isopropyl acrylamide in partially miscible aqueous solutions of a single organic solvent (1-butanol and methyl isobutyl ketone) at 298 K. The experimental results are correlated applying a thermodynamic model, which combines an expression for the Gibbs energy of a liquid phase with an equation for the Helmholtz energy of an elastic network.