Rapid rheological screening to identify conditions of biomaterial hydrogelation - PubMed (original) (raw)

Rapid rheological screening to identify conditions of biomaterial hydrogelation

Kelly M Schultz et al. Soft Matter. 2009.

Abstract

Hydrogels engineered for biomedical applications consist of numerous components, each of which can affect the material assembly and final mechanical properties. We present methods that rapidly generate rheological libraries to identify regimes of hydrogel assembly in a large composition parameter space. This method conserves both material and time, and leads to critical insight into assembly mechanisms and mechanics, which can then be used for further materials development and optimization.

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Figures

Fig. 1

Fig. 1

Eight individual samples are prepared in capillaries and attached to a single microscope slide. Particle trajectories are captured at 63 × magnification, as shown by the sample video frame (scale bar 50 μm). Insets show example trajectories of particles in a liquid and arrested in a gel (scale bar 2 μm).

Fig. 2

Fig. 2

Probe particle mean-squared displacement (MSD) for equilibrated samples, each with a unique composition. The solid line represents the critical relaxation exponent, which distinguishes the rheological state of the sample as either a solid (gel) or a liquid (non-gel).

Fig. 3

Fig. 3

Rheological libraries of hydrogel assembly. (a) Libraries for four backbone functionalities. They are f = 4.2 (top left), 6.5 (top right), 8.3 (bottom left), and 11 (bottom right). Each square represents a discrete sample condition. The symbol colors correspond to the MSD logarithmic slope. Solid black lines represent the Flory–Stockmayer lower (b) and upper (c) limits of gelation. The numbers in each network diagram indicate the generation from an arbitrary reference molecule. The minimum condition for gelation occurs when children cross-link to the same number of molecules as their parent.

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