Journal
POLYMERS FOR ADVANCED TECHNOLOGIES
Volume 26, Issue 7, Pages 874-879Publisher
WILEY-BLACKWELL
DOI: 10.1002/pat.3514
Keywords
clay; biomaterials; poly(ethylene gycol); rheology; nanocomposites
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Funding
- NSF [CBET-1335787]
- US Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences [DE-SC0012704]
- Div Of Chem, Bioeng, Env, & Transp Sys
- Directorate For Engineering [1335787] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
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Hydrogels of the synthetic clay Laponite (R) and Laponite (R)-poly (ethylene oxide) (PEO) have long been studied as model systems to understand fundamental aspects of colloidal disks and colloid-polymer systems. More recently, these systems have been explored for a variety of biomedical applications. However, there is limited information in the literature on the fundamental properties of Laponite and Laponite-polymer gels at pH<9. Here, we report the rheological behavior of Laponite and Laponite-PEO systems at biologically relevant conditions (e.g. physiological pH and ionic strength) and examine the effect of phosphate-buffered saline on the properties of the gel. Our results show that the elastic modulus of both Laponite and Laponite-PEO gels increases dramatically, in some cases by one order of magnitude or more, after immersing gels in phosphate-buffered saline. This may be due to an enhanced edge-face interaction between particles in buffered solutions, which would promote a long-lasting network structure of clay particles. These results are relevant to the design of clay-polymer gels and nanocomposites hydrogels for biomaterials applications. Copyright (c) 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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