Recent progress in gelatin hydrogel nanocomposites for water purification and beyond

Abstract

Innovative characteristics of hydrogels such as swellability, modifiability and hydrophilicity make them materials of choice for water treatment and other applications. Hydrogels have shown excellent adsorptive performance for different types of water pollutants comprising toxic dyes, nutrients and heavy metals. Among different types of hydrogel based materials, hydrogelnanomaterials combination represent a highly viable method to further improve the properties of hydrogel for numerous applications. The combination of hydrogel and nanomaterials leads to the development of hybrid hydrogel with multifunctional network. This novel combination gives synergistic effect to the newly formed novel hydrogel materials. In this article, we briefly review the recent progress in gelatin based hydrogel nanocomposites with particular emphasis on wastewater treatment along with biomedical applications.

A bioinspired 3D shape olibanum‐collagen‐gelatin scaffolds with tunable porous microstructure for efficient neural tissue regeneration

“…Although the utilized materials are not categorized into the group of high strength polymers, supplying the mechanical requirements of the target tissue and providing the desired hydrophilicity to promote cellscaffold interactions are responsible for this selection. [56][57][58]…”

3D Bioprintability of Konjac Glucomannan Hydrogel

“…Hydrogels are a class of hydrophilic or amphiphilic three-dimensional network polymers with chemically or physical cross-linked structure [8,9]. They are structurally similar to native extracellular matrices (ECM) [10].…”

“…Therefore, it is widely used as scaffold materials for bio-printing application. The hydrogels currently used for bio-printing can be divided into synthetic hydrogels and natural hydrogels [13]. Compared to the former, natural hydrogels, e.g.…”

Recent approaches in guar gum hydrogel synthesis for water purification

“…Hydrogels have evolved with inherent advantages beyond continuing technologies like diffusion and adsorption [2]. Due to industrial evolution and population expansion, need for more drinkable water as well as other sustainable materials from natural resources including gums and natural biomass has become an important issue [3][4][5][6][7][8]. The inattentive behavior of humans towards environment has majorly affected the condition of water by contaminating it with inadequate quantities of pesticides, drugs, dyes and other pollutants [9][10][11][12][13].…”

“…Furthermore, hydrogels are the biodegradable gels with interconnecting pores which play essential role in adsorption process and for confining more aquatic pollutants [3,9], its porosity can be permanently achieved by following modifications: (a) by cryogelation [17], (b) integrating nanoparticles [4,18], (c) by lyphilization (drying-freeze of swollen hydrogel) [17], (d) by grafting mechanism [19][20][21] and (e) by cross-linking polymerization [22]. Natural hydrogels can be replaced by artificial hydrogels having long life, high adsorption capacity, more mechanical strength and high swelling nature [23].…”