Alginate-ZnO-Poly(ethylene glycol) dimethacrylate (PEGDMA) via Interpenetrating Polymer Network as a Functional Material for Wound Dressing

Alginate is a biopolymer that has been widely applied as a wound dressing material. To increase the mechanical and antibacterial properties of a wound dressing material, nanoparticles and synthetic polymers are used to modify alginate. One of the materials synthesized into nanoparticles is ZnO, which has potential applications in the medical field because of its good antibacterial properties. On the other hand, PEGDMA has not been widely used in the medical field, opening opportunities to develop research, especially regarding wound dressing materials. However, there has never been a detailed report on the modification of alginate using ZnO and PEGDMA. In this paper, alginate was modified using ZnO and poly(ethylene glycol) dimethacrylate (PEGDMA; alginate–ZnO–PEGDMA, AZP), which was synthesized using the Interpenetrating Polymer Network (IPN) method. AZP can increase a wound dressing material’s mechanical properties by 78% and the antibacterial properties by 94%, which indicates that alginate modification with ZnO and PEGDMA produces high-performance wound dressing materials.