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Abstract
Conducting polymer hydrogels consisting of polypyrrole (PPy) and chitosan (CS) are prepared by static polymerization of pyrrole using methyl orange (MO) as the dopant and Fe2(SO4)3 as the oxidant in the CS aqueous solution. PPy/CS composite hydrogels not only have good electrical conductivities, but also exhibit excellent swelling/deswelling behaviors due to the participation of one-dimensional conducting PPy blocks in the hydrogel network. The effects of the amount of the oxidant and ionic strength on the physical properties of PPy/CS composite hydrogels are studied in detail. The results show that PPy/CS composite hydrogels have improved water absorbencies in saline solutions compared with the conventional polyelectrolyte hydrogel.
Acknowledgements
The work is supported by the New Century Excellent Talents in University of Ministry of Education of China (NCET-Citation10-0157), Outstanding Youth Scientific Foundation of Hubei Province (2012FFA021), PolyU's Project A/C No. ZP3G and Hong Kong Innovation Technology Funding (ITS/264/Citation11).