The Core Technology

The core science underpinning the AGT sciences technology has made rapid progress over the last 6 months. The micro/nanogel materials have been fully characterised and a specification for the material has been produced which is highly reproducible and capable of scale up to commercial production.

Water soluble cationic micro/nanogel materials have been developed which shows multifunctional properties. The synthesis is carried out in water at 25oC; microgel particles self assemble via the covalent cross-linking of poly (vinyl alcohol-co-vinyl acetate) by PD2000, an AGT sciences patented cross-linker. The structure produced is heavily hydrated and composed of positively charged PD2000 nodes interconnected by poly (vinyl alcohol-co-vinyl acetate) segments.

Standard operating procedures have been developed for the synthesis and a narrow specification produced. The table below lists the parameters defining the structure. This data is the result of 28 separate reactions using different batches of PD2000 and different batches of polyvinyl alcohol.

The data above correspond to one example of microgel; the material can be produced with molar mass ranging from 500 to 40,000 kg.mol-1 and zeta potential 5 to 50 mV. In addition microgel particles with fixed molar mass and variable zeta potential can be synthesized. The material is easily purified and scale up to commercial batch production should not be a problem.