Abstract Poly(N-vinyl-2-pyrrolidone) hydrogels produced by direct ultraviolet irradiation of PVP aqueous solution leads to crosslinking through pyrrolidinone moiety photolysis. Generally, hydrogel physical properties, like crosslinking density, pore size, swelling capacity, storage and loss moduli are obtained by swelling and rheological tests. However, relations between anisotropy obtained by fluorescence polarization studies and these properties have not been addressed for hydrogel systems. In this work we show that there is a correlation between the data obtained from anisotropy and rheological experiments, since both of them are related with crosslinking density of the hydrogels. These results reveal that fluorescence polarization spectroscopy is a promising tool for understanding the structure of hydrogels.
