Chemical modification of κ-carrageenan with poly(2-hydroxypropylmethacrylamide) through microwave induced graft copolymerization: Characterization and swelling features.

In the last decade, interest in the development of new graft copolymers based on natural polysaccharides has grown remarkably due to their potential applications in the wastewater treatment, biomedical, nanomedicine, and pharmaceutical fields. Herein, a novel graft copolymer of κ-carrageenan with poly(2-hydroxypropylmethacrylamide) (κ-Crg-g-PHPMA) was synthesized using a 'microwave induced' technique. The synthesized novel graft copolymer has been well characterized in terms of FTIR, C NMR, molecular weight determination, TG, DSC, XRD, SEM, and elemental analyses, taking κ-carrageenan as a reference. The graft copolymers' swelling characteristics were investigated at pH 1.2 and 7.4. The results of swelling studies displayed that the incorporation of PHPMA groups on κ-Crg provides increasing hydrophilicity. The effect of PHPMA percentage in the graft copolymers and pH of the medium on the swelling percentage was studied and the findings exhibited that swelling ability increased with the increment in PHPMA percentage and pH of the medium. The best swelling percentage was attained at pH = 7.4 and a grafting percentage of 81 % reaching 1007 % at the end of 240 min. Moreover, cytotoxicity of the synthesized κ-Crg-g-PHPMA copolymer was assessed on the L929 fibroblast cell line and obtained to be non-toxic.