Synthesis and characterizations of non-isocyanate polyurethane (NIPU) hydrogels

Polyurethane (PU) is on of the most used polymers for the preparation of hydrogels due to its good biocompatibility, biodegradation and excellent mechanical properties. PU hydrogels are found in lot of applications such as wound dressing, soft contact lenses, drug delivery and scaffolds for tissue engineering. Classicaly, PU is produced by a step-growth polymerization between diols and diisocyanates. However, in order to avoid the use of harmful isocyanates compounds and because of regulations which tend to ban the use of isocyanates, we developed hydrogels based on a non-isocyanate polyurethane (NIPU) chemistry by valorizing CO2-sourced cyclic carbonates and amines. Precisely, NIPU hydrogels were prepared by a solvent-free copolymerization between bifunctional hydrophilic polyethylene glycol cyclic carbonates and diamines in presence of a triamine as a crosslinker, followed by a water swelling of the obtained cross-linked gel. Parameters such as the cross-linking ratio and diamine’s nature were optimized. Different clay contents (cloiste 30B) as nanofiller were dispersed in the ideal cyclic carbonate/diamine/triamine formulation prior polymerization in order to reinforce the compression properties of NIPU hydrogels. Finaly, we were able to prepare NIPU hydrogels with water content up to 80 % and good compression properties using low clay content.