Microporous,Thermosensitive Organic-Inorganic Hybrid Hydrogel Prepared by Freezing

Thermally triggered shrinking rates of poly(N-isopropyl-acrylamide) (PNIPA) -based organic-inorganic hydrogel could be accelerated by applying the ice templating method. Freezing and subsequent rehydration of gels is an effective way to prepare the porous polymer network that leads to rapid expelling of pore water. The shrinking coefficients obtained by fitting Fick's law to the data increased two orders of magnitude as compared with the conventional gel before freezing. The microstructure of gels generated during freezing gels had advantage to expel the pore water rapidly probably due to the PNIPA aggregation through the hydrophobic interaction.