Synthesis of polyvinylalcohol bearing catechol for hydrogel formation

Polyvinylalcohol (PVA) is one of the most produced and used polymer thanks to its special properties like its hydrophilicity, water solubility and good mechanical resistance. In this way, PVA is of primary importance for the development of a wide range of applications in adhesive, food industry and biomedical application.
This water-soluble polymer is particularly suited for the Hydrogel formation that require strong cross-linking between polymer chains to avoid solubilization. There is little way to post-modify polyvinyl alcohol to obtain good hydrogel: physical method like freeze thaw and chemical crosslinked by glutaraldehyde are the most commonly used.
In a bioinspired approach, we synthesized a mussel-inspired PVA by a condensation reaction between an aldehyde bearing catechol and two adjacent OH groups of PVA. It has been showed that catechols play an important role in mussel anchorage due to their versatile binding capacity to diverse substrate. They are also able to react with each other and are responsible of strong cohesion between mussel feet protein. For this reason the catechol induce reticulation can be used for hydrogel formation.
However acetal formation is well known to be an equilibrate reaction which needs dry organic condition to fully proceed. Nevertheless, It has been commercially used for the transformation of PVA to produce polyvinylbutyral and polyvinyl formal for glass factory. By extending this type of reaction, we succeed to produce the catechol-modified PVA in a water process. As other polyvinyl acetal, obtained polymer is not water-soluble and strategies to disperse the polymer in solution were presented. Finally gel properties of produce hydrogel were presented