Preparation and Characterization of a Cotton-Based Nanocomposite Hydrogel

In this work, hydrogel nanocomposites were synthesized by solution polymerization of acrylic acid (AA) and itaconic acid (IA) in the presence of cotton fabric. Ammonium persulfate (APS) was used as the polymerization initiator in the presence of a crosslinker, methylene bisacrylamide (MBA). Insertion of Ag followed by reduction of Ag+ cations results in a hydrogel nanocomposite. The structure and morphology of the resulting Ag nanoparticle-loaded grafted fabric was characterized by fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FTIR), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and X-ray diffraction (XRD). The influence of both APS and MBA concentration on the swelling capacity of nanocomposites was also studied.