Formulation of zwitter-ionic terpolymeric hydrogels and their comprehensive rheological investigation

With the rapid enhancement in pharmaceutics, cosmetics, medical applications, and water contamination, the demand of hydrogels with varying properties is increasing day by day. Hydrogels with keen properties like pH sensitive, thermosensitive, biocompatibility, visco-elasticity, mechanical rigidity, and resistive to exterior stress are of great interest. In order to attain such properties for above mentioned applications, a zwitter ionic hydrogel was synthesized having flexible nature, pH sensitive and is tested using rheometer. Rheological properties are elucidated using frequency sweep and flow curve analysis. The fluidity index lower than unity indicates the non-Newtonian shear thinning behavior. The lower value of shear thinning makes it a feasible candidate to be used in paints and cosmetics industries like nail polish, lotions etc. Values for consistency index increased with rising temperature and increasing amount of AMPS. The increase in consistency coefficient and yield stress with increasing temperature from 25 to 35 ̊C indicates the strengthing of hydrogels which will facilitates jellification of drug delivery system on skin. Modified Bingham model was found the best fit to our rheological data. The thermodynamic data obtained revealed higher activation energy for ZHG-02 with greater concentration of AMPS than ZHG-01 with lower amount of AMPS.