Polysaccharide based hydrogels reinforced with halloysite nanotubes via polyelectrolyte complexation

Inspired by the charge density variation, low cost and environmentally friendly clay minerals such as halloysite nanotubes (HNTs), herein we prepared nanocomposite (NC) hydrogels reinforced with HNTs via polyelectrolyte complexation (PEC) of xanthan gum and chitosan using glucuronic acid delta-galactone as acidifying agent in the aqueous media. The charge density of HNT and PEC of biopolymers can be influenced by the microstructure, physical interactions, swelling, and mechanical properties of the NC hydrogels. In vitro cell cultures of NC hydrogels on osteoblasts (MC3T3-E1) cell line showed improvement in cell proliferation than PEC hydrogels and may possibly be applied in biomedical fields such as tissue engineering. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.