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Gamma Irradiation as an Environment Friendly Process for Synthesis of Hydrogels

Pushplata, Ruchi Gupta, Gunjan Suri, Meenu Talwar, Geetha Seshadri, M. Sarwar Alam, R.K. Khandal

Hydrogels have gained considerable importance during the last five decades as an industrially useful material. Due to their unique property of water absorption, they find potential applications in soil conditioning by maintain water level of soil, diapers for infants and adults, feminine hygiene products, wound dressings, etc. While synthetic hydrogels are based on water and synthetic monomer (acrylic acid), semi-synthetic hydrogels are based on water synthetic monomer (acrylic acid) and a natural material (gum arabic). In the present study, synthetic (based on acrylic acid) as well as semi-synthetic (based on gum Arabic and acrylic acid) hydrogels have been synthesized using gamma irradiation technique. A comparative study on the gel content and water absorption behaviour of synthetic and semi-synthetic hydrogels has been carried out in the present paper. Through this study, it has been demonstrated that gamma irradiation is an effective tool for the synthesis of hydrogels. The study reveals that stable and cross-linked hydrogels have been obtained after subjecting to - irradiation. Water absorption of semi-synthetic hydrogels was found to be higher than that of synthetic hydrogels.