Waseeq Ur Rehman, Muhammad Asim, Shah Hussain, Shahid Ali Khan* and Sher Bahadar Khan* Pages 5892 - 5908 ( 17 )
Hydrogels are natural or synthetic polymeric networks, insoluble in water, or sometimes found as colloidal gel where the dispersion medium is water. Hydrogels can absorb approximately 90% water and are regarded as superabsorbent materials; hence these resemble the natural living tissues more than any other biological- based materials. Because of their ability to absorb water, they are used to investigate the properties of swollen polymer networks and have wide applications in different fields such as contact lenses, drug delivery systems for proteins, and many others. To make them biodegradable, labile chemical bonds are introduced in the main backbone through crosslinking. These unstable bonds can then be broken down by various agents chemically, physically, or enzymatically, generally by hydrolysis or through some controlled parameters. Hydrogels are frequently used in the medical field. For instance, pH and temperature-sensitive hydrogels may be used in the targeted drug delivery which have been explained in detail in the current review. The other applications of hydrogels are also explained with regard to personal health care products, biomedical, bio-separation, wound healing, tissue engineering, and drug delivery, etc., which make them promising materials in pharmaceutics. They are also used in agriculture and environmental remediation. The purpose of this review is to expose their salient features and biomedical applications.
Hydrogel, biomedical application, wound healing, drug delivery, personal hygiene, pets’ hygiene, contact lenses, bone tissue engineering, pharmaceutics.
Department of Chemistry Govt. Postgraduate College, Nowshera 24100, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Department of Chemistry Govt. Postgraduate College, Nowshera 24100, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Department of Chemistry Govt. Postgraduate College, Nowshera 24100, Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Department of Chemistry, University of Swabi, Anbar 23561, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Center of Excellence for Advanced Materials Research and Chemistry Department, Faculty of Science, King Abdulaziz University, P.O. Box 80203, Jeddah 21589