The objectives of this research were to prepare hydrogels of alginate and carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) at various ratios of alginate:CMC (10:0, 8:2, 6:4, 4:6, 2:8 and 0:10). The mixtures of alginate and CMC were then chemical crosslinked with glutaraldehyde at 0, 2, 5 % by weight and/or ionic crosslinked with copper sulfate at 0 and 0.02 molar during film casting on glass plate. The mechanical results showed that tensile strength and elongation at break of alginate/carboxymethyl cellulose hydrogels crosslinked with the combination of glutaraldehyde and copper sulfate were lower than that of films with non-crosslinking as well as Young’s modulus. The results of thermal property showed that when the content of crosslinking agents increased, residual char of alginate/carboxymethyl cellulose hydrogels crosslinked with the combination of glutaraldehyde and copper sulfate increased due to the formation of Na2CO3. In addition, swelling time of alginate/carboxymethyl cellulose hydrogels crosslinked with the combination of glutaraldehyde and copper sulfate was prolonged much longer than that of the non-crosslinked and the crosslinked with the individual crosslinking agents. This was agreed with percentage of solid remain after water dissolving and scanning electron microscopic images which showed the increase number of pores when hydrogels crosslinked with the combination of glutaraldehyde and copper sulfate. It is concluded that hydrogel films with the ratio of alginate to CMC at 10:0 using a couple (chemical and ionic crosslink) crosslinked system (5% by weight of glutaraldehyde and 0.02 molar of copper sulfate) provided the longer swelling time, more percentage of solid remain and higher stability than that of the non-crosslinked hydrogels.
