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Umit KOC et al. HYDROGEL INCORPORATED TEXTILE SURFACES BY STITCHING AND MOLECULAR CROSSLINKING

Hydrogels are the materials that can be produced from many natural and synthetic raw materials that can hold large amounts of water because they contain a large number of hydroxyl groups in their structure. Hydrogels are generally biocompatible and can be used in many biomedical applications such as wound dressings, drug delivery systems, and biomaterial immobilization. They can be produced in fibers, surfaces, and 3D forms at nano, micro and macro scales. Hydrogels can be obtained by polymerizing small molecules to form a network structure, or they can be formed by cross-linking macromolecules containing hydroxyl groups in their structure. Polyvinyl alcohol is among the leading synthetic polymers that can be converted into the hydrogel form. In this study, polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) yarns were incorporated into the base knitted and woven non-gelable fabrics by stitching and transformed into a hydrogel-incorporated fabric structure by hydrogelation of the PVA yarns via simultaneous dissolution and crosslinking with the applied crosslinking agent. Mechanical properties of the hydrogel-incorporated fabric structures were observed via tensile measurements.

Keywords: Textile-based hydrogels, PVA hydrogels, Crosslinking, Knitted fabric