Magnetic Biopolymeric Hydrogel Composite Material with Self-healing Attribute

Abstract

This work presents a polysaccharide-based magnetic self-healing hydrogel fabricated through the incorporation of surface modified magnetic nanoparticles, a silica-surface modified magnetic - Fe3O4@SiO2, (MNP), to a polymer composite synthesized from the oxidation of xanthan gum (XG) and it's crosslinking with chitosan (CS) to generate Schiff base linkages rendering self-healing character. Fourier transform infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy analyses revealed the successful formation of Schiff base bonding in the CS-OXG and CS-OXG-MNP hydrogels. In incorporating surface-modified magnetic nanoparticles, the resulting CS-OXG-MNP hydrogel with a weight ratio of 1:1:0.2, respectively, exhibited a better self-healing hydrogel in terms of faster self-healing characteristics and stronger mechanical property.