Hydrogel-based devices for biomedical applications

This review paper presents hydrogel-based devices for biomedical applications. The first part of the paper gives a comprehensive, qualitative, theoretical overview of hydrogels' synthesis and operation. Crosslinking methods, operation principles and transduction mechanisms are discussed in this part. The second part includes applications of hydrogel devices in specific fields of interest. Sensing, fluid control, drug delivery, nerve regeneration and other biomedical applications constitute the main focus of this part. The aim of this paper is to briefly present recent advances of the field, without neglecting older ones, and to discuss important or novel concepts of each. (C) 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.