Effect of Hydrophobic Pollution on Response of Thermo-Sensitive Hydrogel

Hydrogels are widely studied for chemical sensors. However, they are known to adsorb organic compound and metal ions. The adsorption abilities of hydrogels against organic compounds and metal ions will negatively affect the performance of a hydrogel based chemical sensor. To clarify the effect of hydrophobic pollution on swelling behavior of temperature-sensitive gel, the temperature-responses of spherical N,N-diethylacrylamide (DEAA) gel in phenol solution were evaluated using the collective polymer diffusion constant. Phenol was selected as a model hydrophobic pollution. The equilibrium radius of DEAA gel changed discontinuously at about 874 g/m3 phenol solution, and the collective polymer diffusion constant decreased sharply between 874 and 916 g/m3, suggesting a “critical slowing down”. The phenol concentration difference EC was successfully used to correlate phenol concentration with the collective polymer diffusion constant. The correlation will be useful as an estimation of hydrogel response reduction associated with hydrophobic pollution.