Acta Phys. -Chim. Sin. ›› 2011, Vol. 27 ›› Issue (05): 1267-1272.doi: 10.3866/PKU.WHXB20110429

• PHYSICAL CHEMISTRY OF MATERIALS • Previous Articles    

Magnetic Polyacrylamide/Fe3O4 Nanocomposite Hydrogel with High Mechanical Strength

XIANG Mei, HE Chang-Cheng, WANG Hui-Liang   

  1. College of Chemistry, Beijing Normal University, Beijing 100875, P. R. China
  • Received:2010-10-20 Revised:2011-01-03 Published:2011-04-28
  • Contact: HE Chang-Cheng E-mail:plaschem@163.com
  • Supported by:

    The project was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (50673013) and Beijing Municipal Commission of Education,China.

Abstract:

Polyacrylamide (PAAm) hydrogels with very high mechanical strength were prepared using radiation-peroxidized micelles that were formed by surfactant molecules as initiating and crosslinking centers. PAAm/Fe3O4 nanocomposite hydrogels were obtained by introducing Fe3O4 nanoparticles into PAAm hydrogels through an in situ chemical co-precipitation method. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) investigations showed that the nanoparticles were homogeneously distributed and the particles were about 30 nm in size. X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis showed that the obtained nanoparticles were spinel Fe3O4. The PAAm/Fe3O4 nanocomposite hydrogels showed superparamagnetism. The ferrogels also had good mechanical properties, the elongation at break of some gels could be as high as 1200% and the maximum tensile strength was about 0.10 MPa, and they exhibited very good shape recoverability.

Key words: Hydrogel, Fe3O4, Magnetism, Mechanical strength