Effect of vinyl montmorillonite on the physical, responsive and antimicrobial properties of the optimized polyacrylic acid/chitosan superabsorbent via Box-Behnken model

International Journal of Biological Macromolecules
Mohamed S Abdel Aziz, Hend E Salama

Abstract

This work aims to study the effect of a vinyl-modified montmorillonite (VMT) on the physical and antimicrobial properties of chitosan-graft-polyacrylic acid superabsorbent (Ch-g-PA). Ch-g-PA was first optimized using Box-Behnken design to obtain the maximum equilibrium swelling, and the model was efficient to express the experimental swelling data (R2 = 0.999). VMT was further added to the optimized Ch-g-PA in different contents 0, 4, 7 and 10 wt%. FTIR confirmed the successful synthesis of the copolymers and their nanocomposites. Morphology and the average pores size were studied using SEM. Wide angle X-ray diffraction showed the formation of exfoliated nanocomposites after VMT addition. Thermal stability studied by TGA was greatly enhanced in the presence of VMT. The swelling kinetics by Voigt-based viscoelastic model showed that the equilibrium swelling was increased by increasing the VMT up to 7 wt% then decreased after further incorporation. The superabsorbents exhibited salt and pH-responsive properties and showed a pH-reversibility at two buffer solutions (pH = 2 and pH = 9). Moreover, the prepared superabsorbents exhibited a strong bacterial and fungal killing ability which becomes more pronounced upon increasing the VM...Continue Reading

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