Hydrogels have existed for more than half a century, and today they have many applications in various processes ranging from industrial to biological. There are numerous original papers, reviews, and monographs focused on the synthesis, properties, and applications of hydrogels. This chapter covers the fundamental aspects and several applications of hydrogels based on the old and the most recent publications in this field.

In the present study, a new, green, and biodegradable molecularly imprinted polymer (MIP) based on modified cellulose is introduced for the drug furosemide. First, microcrystalline cellulose was converted into cellulose acrylate (CA). Then the prepared CA underwent self‐crosslinking in the drug preassembly solution. The preassembly solution of the drug was also prepared using furosemide as the template molecule and acrylamide as the functional monomer in an aqueous medium. The results obtained from the binding and selectivity studies indicate the successful preparation of the CA‐based MIP (CA‐MIP) in aqueous solution. In the final step, an in vitro release study of furosemide from the synthesized polymers was carried out in a pH = 7.41 phosphate‐buffered saline solution at 37 °C. The drug release profiles showed that the release rate of the CA‐MIP is more controlled than that of the corresponding nonimprinted polymer, especially at the early stages of release. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2017, 134, 45581.

The main problem that limits the application of Linear Sweep Voltammetry (LSV) in simultaneous determinations is the presence of background interference, which affects the accurate multicomponent determinations due to the overlapping of the voltammetric signals. This study represents the chemometrics processing of a series of the first-derivative LSVs, recorded on a glassy carbon electrode modified with Multi-Walled Carbon Nanotubes (MWCNTs) and Poly L-methionine, using Discrete Wavelet Transform (DWT) to compress the resulting data and feedforward back-propagation Artificial neural networks (ANNs) for the simultaneous determination of codeine and thebaine, as two opium alkaloids. Linear univariate calibration curves using first-derivative voltammograms were obtained in the ranges 2-1000 μM for codeine (at E p = 814 mV) and 5-500 μM for thebaine (at E p = 741 mV), respectively. Besides, the excellent regression parameters for the comparison graphs of ANNs and satisfactory recoveries in real serum samples in the ranges 98-102 % for codeine and 90-107 % for thebaine indicate the applicability of the proposed method for routine simultaneous analyses.

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