Hello,
I need to prepare a polyethylene glycol hydrogel, but have only limited supply to chemicals, so is there any crosslinking agent (except citric acid) that I may have access to and is able to crosslink PEG, preferably at room temperature.
Physical crosslinking like freezing and thawing (does probably not work) is also a possibility and would be preferred by me, because else I have to exchange the crosslinker-hydrogel polymer with my battery electrolyte, which takes a lot of time.
I suppose you can try N,N’-methylenebisacrylamide as a crosslinking agent and PVP as a strengthening agent to give an impetus to gelling behavior of the hydrogel.
You can use PEG di-acrylate (commercially available) with V70 (radical initiator) at 40°C or 50°C, leading to the formation of a PEG hydrogel.
If you want to fasten the crosslinking reaction, you can maybe use another radical initiator, which is more reactive than V70. You can also play on the Mn of the PEG, to tune the mechanical properties of your hydrogel.
The borax (sodium borate) as a laundry bleaching agent, is mixed at a 4% concentration in water. To do this measure out 4 grams of borax and dissolve in 96 grams (milliliters) of water.
For PEG based hydrogels, MBA (methylene bis acrylamid) is a suitable chemical crosslinker at room temperature . And also inorder to enhance the swelling ratio you can add acrylic acid to the structure. Free radical polymerization is an easy approach if you want to start from the scratch.
Good luck
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