Poly(2‐hydroxyethyl methacrylate)/boric acid composite hydrogel as soft contact lens material: Thermal, optical, rheological, and enhanced antibacterial properties

ABSTRACT The present work proposes to fabricate a composite hydrogel material that well characterized, transparent, biocompatible, and self‐antibacterial as potential soft contact lens material. For this purpose, poly(2‐hydroxyethyl methacrylate) (PHEMA)/boric acid (BA) composite hydrogels were successfully prepared by chemical crosslinking with BA through in situ polymerization using different BA ratios between 1 and 10% w/w. Afterward, the compositions, thermal stability, transparence, oxygen permeability, water uptake capacity, swelling ratio as well as morphological and rheological properties, in vitro degradability, in vitro cytotoxicity, and antibacterial properties of the all prepared materials were analyzed using a series of different techniques. The thermal stability, hydrophilicity, water uptake, oxygen permeability gradually increased depending ratio of BA, which is desirable for biomaterial. While the transparence and refractive index decreased, the composite hydrogels, except for BA content of 10 wt %, maintained enough transparency to be used for contact lens. In addition, PHEMA/BA composite hydrogels exhibited good cytocompatibility (PHEMA‐1%BA and PHEMA‐3%BA) and excellent antibacterial activity against Gram‐positive ( Staphylococcus aureus and Enterococcus faecium ) and Gram‐negative ( Escherichia coli and Pseudomonas aeruginosa ) bacteria. Overall, the results demonstrated that the obtained PHEMA/BA composite hydrogels could be considered as self‐antibacterial contact lens and a potential composite biomaterial for other applications. © 2018 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2018 , 135 , 46575.