Investigation of Swelling Capacity of Carboxymethyl Cellulose/Gelatin/Zinc Oxide Hydrogels

Carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC)-based hydrogels had great potential in biomedical applications due to their biodegradability, biocompatibility, and solubility. Gelatin-based hydrogels were significant in the biomedical field for applications due to their high water retention capacity, biocompatibility, and biodegradability. Zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO) presenting high biocompatibility are widely used as an antimicrobial agent. CMC/Gelatin/ZnO hydrogels were developed with different ZnO nanoparticle ratios (0.05%, 0.1%) with further crosslinking using glutaraldehyde (1%, 2%, 2.5%, and 5%). The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of pH (pH: 5.5; 7.5) on the swelling behaviour of CMC/Gelatin/ZnO hydrogels. The increase in ZnO content resulted in the increase of swelling capacity. The highest swelling percentage (670%) occurred at pH 5.5 with the samples containing 0.1% ZnO. The lowest swelling ratio (467%) was observed at the pH 5.5 with the control group.