Effect of Monomers for The Synthesis of Chitosan-Based Hydrogel

Artificial skin is introduced to treat thermal injuries and chronic skin wounds to prevent bacterial infection and water loss. It significantly reduced morbidity and mortality of skin wounds. However, it has limitations such as high cost, risk of infectious disease transmission, needs of multiple surgeries, a low tendency to adhere onto wound surface and can cause painfulness. Recently, chitosan-based hydrogel is explored in the development of artificial skin in biomedical application as it can overcome the drawbacks of the conventional artificial skin. In this study, chitosan-based hydrogel was synthesized using free radical emulsion polymerization and the effect of different formulation towards the biomedical application as artificial skin was studied. Different composition of monomers (chitosan (0.15-1.00 g), methacrylic acid (MAA) (0.25-1.50 g) and N-isopropylacrylamide (NIPAM) (0.25-1.50 g)) was studied to investigate their effects on characteristics of chitosan-based hydrogel including functional groups, degree of swelling, and porosity test to evaluate their potential as an artificial skin. The study showed that low chitosan composition and high NIPAM composition increased the degree of swelling and also porosity. Chitosan-based hydrogel with low amount of chitosan (0.15 g), MAA (0.88 g) and medium amount of NIPAM (0.88 g) was the optimized formulation as an artificial skin.