Radiation Synthesis and Application of Carboxymethylated Chitosan Hydrogels

This research proposal is to investigate radiation effect of carboxymethylated chitosan in order to obtain the crosslinked carboxymethylated chitosan. The application studies on CM-chitosan- based intelligent hydrogels will be tried too. Chitin is the most abundant natural amino polysaccharide and estimated to be produced annually almost as much as cellulose. Chitosan is the deacetylated product of chitin showing the enhanced solubility in dilute acids, further, carboxymethylated chitosan (CM-chitosan) can solve in both acidic and basic physiological media, which might be good candidates as a kind of biomedical materials. Radiation technique is an important method for modification of chitin derivatives. It includes radiation-induced degradation, grafting, and crosslinking. It was found that CM-chitosan degraded in solid state or dilute aqueous solution under irradiation, but crosslinked at paste-like sate when the concentration of CM-chitosan is more than 10%. Both degraded and crosslinked CM-chitosan have antibacterial activity, so it is essential to investigate in detail the radiation effect of CM-chitosan. Study on radiation effect of CM-chitosan in different condition is beneficial to modification of CM-chitosan by irradiation technique. However, little study was reported on radiation crosslinking and application of CM-chitosan. The radiation-closslinked CM-chitosan synthesized from chitosan was characterized by a Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) analysis. A kinetic swelling in water and the mechanical properties such as a gelation, water absorptivity, and gel strength were also investigated. For the preparation of crosslinked CM-chitosan by using gamma irradiation, the concentration of an aqueous CM-chitosan is above 10wt%. We confirmed that the gel contents was in the range of 15-63%, and when the irradiation dose was increased, the degree of gelation was decreased by disintegration of the CM-chitosan. In conclusion, we developed a new synthetic method for preparing the CM-chitosan hydrogel by using a gamma-ray irradiation instead of a crosslinking agent and the prepared CM-chitosan hydrogel could be used as a postsurgical anti-adhesion barriers