Investigation of Mechanical Properties and Dye Adsorption Capacities of Novel Hydrophobic Association Nanocomposite Hydrogels

Abstract

The preparation of high performance hydrogels has always been one of the research focuses in the area of soft matters and functional polymers. In this paper, a facile method was developed for the preparation of high performance hydrophobic association nanocomposite hydrogels (HANC gels) via in situ copolymerization of acrylamide (AM) and octadecyl methacrylate (OMA) in the aqueous suspension of hectorite clay Laponite HZ-200 (clay) with sodium dodecyl benzene sulfonate (SDBS). Tensile hysteresis curves showed that the hysteresis degrees between HANC gels and conventional hydrophobic association hydrogels (HA gels) were almost the same, but the tensile strength of the HANC gel reinforced by just 0.4 wt% clay at the strain of 1500% was already as 630% as the strength of the HA gel, which indicated that the mechanical properties of the HA gel were greatly enhanced by the introduction of a small amount of clay without increasing the internal friction in the hydrogel network. The effects of clay on the structure of HANC gels were further confirmed by swelling test, it was found that the addition of clay effectively maintained the structural integrity of HANC gels in watery environment and prevented the collapse of gel network. Moreover, HANC gels exhibited superior cationic dye adsorption capacity compared to HA gels due to the existence of abundant negative charges on the surfaces of clay nanosheets