'Middle East Technical University, Faculty of Architecture'
Abstract
Poly(2-Hydroxyethyl acrylate), PHEA, is used as hydrophilic polymeric gels which have been studied because of its great importance for agricultural or biomedical applications. Biomedical applications of hydrogels include soft contact lenses, artificial corneas, soft tissue substitutes and burn dressings. In this study, it was aimed to synthesis the polymers with well-defined molecular weights, polydispersities and cahin topologies. Bulk, solution and atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) techniques at different temperatures were examined. The polymerization in bulk form was carried in vacuum and in open atmosphere. The polymerization curves showed autoacceleration mechanism. The polymers obtained were insoluable in most common solvents because of having high molecular weights and are crosslinked. So in order to overcome this problem, 2-hydroxyethyl acrylate was polymerized by solution and ATRP methods. The activation energy for bulk polymerization was found from Arrhenius plot. The polymer was characterized by FT-IR, DSC, TGA, 1H and 13C NMR techniques, Tensile tests were also examined for PHEA.M.S. - Master of Scienc
