Preparation and characterization of polyvinyl alcohol based biomaterials:: Water sorption and in vitro blood compatibility study

Semi-interpenetrating polymer networks (semi-IPNs) based on polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and crosslinked polyacrylamide (PAM) were prepared by redox polymerization and further characterized by FTIR, ESEM, and XRD techniques. The semi-IPNs of varying compositions were investigated for their water sorption behavior, and the network parameters like average molecular weight between crosslinks (M-C) and crosslink density were evaluated from water imbibition measurements. The semi-IPNs were also judged for their in vitro blood compatibility by blood clot formation and percent hemolysis test. It was noticed that the chemical architecture exert a profound effect on the over all performance of the biomaterials. (c) 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.