Journal
BIOMACROMOLECULES
Volume 19, Issue 2, Pages 364-373Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/acs.biomac.7b01464
Keywords
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Funding
- United States National Science Foundation [DMREF-1435957]
- DTRA [HDTRA1-13-1-0037]
- National Natural Science Foundation of China [51373124, 21334005]
- Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [204201610145]
- Natural Science Foundation of Hubei Province of China [2015CFA017]
- China Scholarship Council
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The growing importance of hydrogels in translational medicine has stimulated the development of top-down fabrication methods, yet often these methods lack the capabilities to generate the complex matrix architectures observed in biology. Here we show that temporally varying electrical signals can cue a self-assembling polysaccharide to controllably form a hydrogel with complex internal patterns. Evidence from theory and experiment indicate that internal structure emerges through a subtle interplay between the electrical current that triggers self-assembly and the electrical potential (or electric field) that recruits and appears to orient the polysaccharide chains at the growing gel front. These studies demonstrate that short sequences (minutes) of low-power (similar to 1 V) electrical inputs can provide the program to guide self-assembly that yields hydrogels with stable, complex, and spatially varying structure and properties.
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