Ramírez Arnaldo, Gómez Leonir, Müller Alejandro J, Rojas de Gáscue Blanca
Laboratorio de Polímeros, Instituto de Investigaciones en Biomedicina y Ciencias Aplicadas, IIBCAUDO "Dra. Susan Tai", Universidad de Oriente, Cumaná 6101, Sucre, Venezuela.
Centro de Investigación de Materiales (CIMAT), Universidad Nacional de Guayana, Ciudad Guayana 8001, Bolívar, Venezuela.
Polymers (Basel). 2022 Oct 14;14(20):4330. doi: 10.3390/polym14204330.
In this work, hybrid hydrogels were synthesized with the inclusion of two types of clay materials that are considered industrial waste: red mud (RM) and ferrosilicomanganese fines (FeSiMn). These solid waste materials were characterized by studying their particle size and chemical composition, which are two key variables for their application in the synthesis of hybrid hydrogels. The morphology imaged by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and scanning electron microscopy (SEM), showed, in the case of RM, heterogeneous size and shape particles, with 73% of the particles having lengths of less than 5 μm. On the other hand, FeSiMn had particles with a circular morphology of nanometric sizes. Regarding the synthesis of the hybrid hydrogels, it was determined that the incorporation of small percentages (0.1%) of the inorganic phases improved the capacity of the materials to absorb water (swelling indices of 1678% and 1597% for the RM and FeSiMn hydrogels, respectively) compared to the conventional polyacrylamide hydrogel (1119%). An improvement in Vickers microhardness and storage modulus (G') was also observed: the hybrid with 10% RM presented a G', 50 times higher than conventional hydrogel. The results show the merit of RM and FeSiMn in improving the properties of hydrogels.
在这项工作中，通过加入两种被视为工业废料的粘土材料合成了杂化水凝胶：赤泥（RM）和硅锰铁细粉（FeSiMn）。通过研究它们的粒径和化学成分对这些固体废料进行了表征，这是它们在杂化水凝胶合成中应用的两个关键变量。通过透射电子显微镜（TEM）和扫描电子显微镜（SEM）成像的形态表明，对于RM，颗粒尺寸和形状不均匀，73%的颗粒长度小于5μm。另一方面，FeSiMn具有纳米尺寸的圆形形态颗粒。关于杂化水凝胶的合成，已确定与传统聚丙烯酰胺水凝胶（1119%）相比，加入小百分比（0.1%）的无机相提高了材料的吸水能力（RM和FeSiMn水凝胶的溶胀指数分别为1678%和1597%）。还观察到维氏显微硬度和储能模量（G'）有所提高：含有10%RM的杂化材料的G'比传统水凝胶高50倍。结果表明了RM和FeSiMn在改善水凝胶性能方面的优点。
