Mechanical and microstructural properties of hybrid poly(ethylene glycol)–soy protein hydrogels for wound dressing applications

Biomimetic hydrogel made of poly(ethylene glycol) and soy protein with a water content of 96% has been developed for moist wound dressing applications. In this study, such hybrid hydrogels were investigated by both tensile and unconfined compression measurements in order to understand the relationships between structural parameters of the network, its mechanical properties and protein absorption in vitro . Elastic moduli were found to vary from 1 to 17 kPa depending on the composition, while the Poisson’s ratio (≈0.18) and deformation at break (≈300%) showed no dependence on this parameter. Further calculations yielded the crosslinking concentration, the average molecular weight between crosslinks ( M _C ) and the mesh size. The results show that reactions between PEG and protein create polymeric chains comprising molecules of PEG and protein fragments between crosslinks. M _C is three times higher than that expected for a “theoretical network.” On the basis of this data, we propose a model for the 3D network of the hydrogel, which is found to be useful for understanding drug release properties and biomedical potential of the studied material. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Biomed Mater Res 2007