Radiation preparation and swelling behavior of sodium carboxymethyl cellulose hydrogels

Sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) is a kind of degraded polymer under γ-irradiation. However, in this work, it has been found that CMC crosslinks partially to form hydrogel by radiation technique at more than 20% CMC aqueous solution. The gel fraction increases with the dose. The crosslinking reaction of CMC is promoted in the presence of N₂ or N₂O due to the increase of free radicals on CMC backbone, but gel fraction of CMC hydrogel is not high (<40%). Some important values related to this kind of new CMC hydrogel synthesized under different conditions, such as radiation yield of crosslinking G(x), gelation dose R_g, number average molecular weight of network M_c were calculated according to the Charlesby–Pinner equation. The results indicated that although crosslinked CMC hydrogel could be prepared by radiation method, the rate of radiation degradation of CMC was faster than that of radiation crosslinking due to the character of CMC itself. Swelling dynamics of CMC hydrogel and its swelling behavior at different conditions, such as acidic, basic, inorganic salt as well as temperature were also investigated. Strong acidity, strong basicity, small amount of inorganic salts and lower temperature can reduce swelling ratio.