Tuning the Hydrophobicity of a Hydrogel Using Self-Assembled Domains of Polymer Cross-Linkersopen access
- Authors
- Hee-Jin Kim; Sungwoo Cho; Seung Joo Oh; Sung Gyu Shin; RYU, HEE WOOK; Jeong, Jae Hyun
- Issue Date
- May-2019
- Publisher
- MDPI Open Access Publishing
- Keywords
- Degree of swelling; Hydrogel; Hydrophobicity; Self-assembly
- Citation
- Materials, v.12, no.10, pp.1635
- Journal Title
- Materials
- Volume
- 12
- Number
- 10
- Start Page
- 1635
- URI
- http://scholarworks.bwise.kr/ssu/handle/2018.sw.ssu/34735
- DOI
- 10.3390/ma12101635
- ISSN
- 1996-1944
- Abstract
- Hydrogels incorporated with hydrophobic motifs have received considerable attention to recapitulate the cellular microenvironments, specifically for the bio-mineralization of a 3D matrix. Introduction of hydrophobic molecules into a hydrogel often results in irregular arrangement of the motifs, and further phase separation of hydrophobic domains, but limited efforts have been made to resolve this challenge in developing the hydrophobically-modified hydrogel. Therefore, this study presents an advanced integrative strategy to incorporate hydrophobic domains regularly in a hydrogel using self-assembled domains formed with polymer cross-linkers, building blocks of a hydrogel. Self-assemblies formed by polymer cross-linkers were examined as micro-domains to incorporate hydrophobic motifs in a hydrogel. The self-assembled structures in a pre-gelled solution were confirmed with the fluorescence analysis and the hydrophobicity of a hydrogel could be tuned by incorporating the hydrophobic chains in a controlled manner. Overall, the results of this study would greatly serve to tuning performance of a wide array of hydrophobically-modified hydrogels in drug delivery, cell therapies and tissue engineering.
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