Meso-ordered soft hydrogels
Journal article, 2012

Many factors such as cross-link density are known to dictate the properties of hydrogels; however, less is known about the microstructure and how it can be tailored to control the properties. Here we demonstrate a method of forming microstructured hydrogels using a soft template that allows us to control and modify the microstructure. Meso-ordered hydrogels were formed by chemically cross-linking poly(ethylene glycol)-diacrylate (PEG-DA) segments via photopolymerization in the presence of poly(ethylene glycol)-poly(propylene glycol)-poly(ethylene glycol) (EOxPOyEOx) block copolymers. The results showed that hydrogels with lamellar mesostructured regions were formed when high concentrations of PEG-DA segments (50%) were used in combination with block co-polymers having certain ratios of the hydrophilic and hydrophobic blocks (P123, EO20PO70EO20). Only lamellar mesostructures were observed, independent of the PEG molecular weight (1500 or 3400 g mol(-1)) or block co-polymer concentration (10-50%). This finding demonstrates that it is possible to form soft meso-ordered hydrogels using block co-polymers as templates, and they do not follow the same mesophase behavior as the purely self-assembled block co-polymers.

mesoporous

silica

templates

lyotropic liquid-crystalline

photopolymerization

mechanism

methacrylate

kinetics

block-copolymer

nanostructure

polymer network hydrogels

Author

Maria Claesson

Chalmers, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Applied Surface Chemistry

K. Engberg

Stanford University

C. W. Frank

Stanford University

Martin Andersson

Chalmers, Chemical and Biological Engineering, Applied Surface Chemistry

Soft Matter

1744-683X (ISSN) 1744-6848 (eISSN)

Vol. 8 31 8149-8156

Subject Categories

Chemical Sciences

DOI

10.1039/c2sm26226f

More information

Latest update

11/5/2018