Facile Physicochemical Reprogramming of PEG-Dithiolane Microgels.

ABSTRACT: Granular biomaterials have found widespread applications in tissue engineering, in part because of their inherent porosity, tunable properties, injectability, and 3D printability. However, the assembly of granular hydrogels typically relies on spherical microparticles and more complex particle geometries have been limited in scope, often requiring templating of individual microgels by microfluidics or in-mold polymerization. Here, we use dithiolane-functionalized synthetic macromolecules to fabricate photopolymerized microgels via batch emulsion, and then harness the dynamic disulfide crosslinks to rearrange the network. Through unconfined compression between parallel plates in the presence of photoinitiated radicals, we transform the isotropic microgels are transformed into disks. Charact

SUBMITTER: Nelson BR 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11102926 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature