Low viscosity hydrogel of guar gum: Preparation and physicochemical characterization

Guar gum was cross-linked with glutaraldehyde and characterized by GPC, rheology, WADX, SEM and TGA. This guar gum is a galactomannan polysaccharide, that contains small amount of arabinose, glucose and uronic acid, besides galactose and mannose. The polymer has high molar mass, with M¯w, M¯n and M¯v values of 2.0 × 106, 1.2 × 106 and 1.9 × 106 g/mol, respectively. The reticulation follows a slow process and lead to a viscosity increase of 40 times compared with the original gum solution. The final viscosity was similar to that of Hylan G-F 20, a hyaluronate derivative, commercially used in viscosupplementation treatment. The gel contains 95.6% of water and the amount of residual glutaraldehyde is much lower than the LD-50. Porous structure was detected by SEM and thermal stability was improved by the cross-linking. The low viscosity, the small amount of remained glutaraldehyde, and the thermal stability indicates that the guar hydrogel has potential to be applied as biomaterial with specific rheological requirements.