Design of a drug delivery system based on poly(acrylamide‐<i>co</i>‐acrylic acid)/chitosan nanostructured hydrogels

Abstract

Abstract To obtain biodegradable materials for biomedical applications, new biopolymeric hydrogels based on blends of polyacrylamide nanoparticles and chitosan have been prepared. In this work, we have studied the behavior of the diffusion of ascorbic acid (V‐C) from poly(acrylamide‐ co ‐acrylic acid)/chitosan nanostructured hydrogels. The process involves the synthesis of nanoparticles of polyacrylamide by inverse microemulsion polymerization and their complexation with chitosan dissolved in an acrylic acid aqueous solution. We have studied the effect of the concentration of the polyacrylamide nanoparticles, which are crosslinked with N,N ′‐methylenebisacrylamide, in the delivery of V‐C. The results indicate that the drug delivery operates by a non‐Fickian mechanism. Also, we have obtained the diffusion coefficient for V‐C in gels for different nanoparticle concentrations, using a modified form of Fick's second law that takes into account dimensional changes in the hydrogels during drug release. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 2007