Journal
POLYMERS
Volume 9, Issue 11, Pages -Publisher
MDPI
DOI: 10.3390/polym9110611
Keywords
nano-silica; PVA; PAM blended hydrogel; dissipative particle dynamics; aggregation behavior; relative concentration distributions
Categories
Funding
- China Scholarship Council (CSC) [201606290095]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [51175432]
- Innovation Platform of Biofabrication [17SF0002]
- Key Industrial Science and technology projects of Shaanxi [2015GY047]
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada [NSERC RGPIN-2014-05648]
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Due to the aggregation behavior of nano-silica in aqueous solution, the use of nano-silica without surface modification for synthesizing hydrogels is still a challenging task. This paper presents our study on the use of dissipative particle dynamics simulations to discover the aggregation behavior of nano-silica in polyvinyl alcohol (PVA)/polyacrylamide (PAM) blended hydrogels. By simulations, we aimed at investigating the effects of such factors as nano-silica content, polymer component ratio, temperature and shear rate on the aggregation behavior of nano-silica in terms of the mesoscopic morphologies and the relative concentration distribution functions. Our results reveal that the dispersion of nano-silica is seen if the nano-silica content is increased to 1.5%, and the aggregation of nano-silica becomes noticeable in blended hydrogels with an increase in the nano-silica content. This finding agrees well with the experimental results obtained by means of scanning electron microscopy. Furthermore, it is also found that the dispersion of nano-silica becomes more uniform with an increase in PAM content, temperature and shear rate. These findings greatly enrich our understanding of the aggregation behavior of nano-silica in PVA/PAM blended hydrogels.
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