Due to their porous structure, aqueous environment and dietary fiber nature arabinoxylan (AX) gels could have potential applications for colon-specific therapeutic molecule delivery. In addition, prebiotic and health related effects of AX have been previously demonstrated. It has been also reported that cross-linked AX can be degraded by bacteria from the intestinal microbiota. However, AX gels...

We report the effect of flow-induced dynamical heterogeneity on the nonlinear elastic modulus of weakly aggregated colloidal gels that have undergone yielding by an imposed step strain deformation. The gels are comprised of sterically stabilized poly(methyl methacrylate) colloids interacting through short-ranged depletion attractions. When a step strain of magnitude varying from γ = 0.1 to 80.0...

An 80-membered library of gels composed of monofunctional 2-ethyl-2-oxazoline and 2-nonyl-2-oxazoline and one of four selected difunctional 2-oxazolines (containing either ether or ester bonds) were synthesized by microwave-assisted ring-opening polymerizations. The difunctional 2-oxazolines were prepared from the thiol-ene reaction of glycol dimercaptoacetate or 2,2'-(ethylenedioxy)diethanethi...

Introduction Stimuli-responsive gels undergo abrupt changes in volume in response to environmental changes such as pH and temperature. Stimuli-responsive gels have attracted considerable attention as smart materials in the biochemical and biomedical fields, since they can sense environmental changes and induce structural changes by themselves. The fascinating properties of such stimuli-responsi...

The effect of mixing on the properties of agar gels was investigated with consideration being given to both macrostructural and microstructural characteristics of the gel through rheological techniques that include conventional and ultrasound based methods and Differential Scanning Calorimetry. Agar gels of 1 and 3% concentrations were prepared. The gels were subjected to three different mixing...

Porous titanium scaffolds are a promising class of biomaterials for grafting large bone defects, because titanium provides sufficient mechanical support, whereas its porous structure allows bone ingrowth resulting in good osseointegration. To reinforce porous titanium scaffolds with biological cues that enhance and continue bone regeneration, scaffolds can be incorporated with bioactive gels fo...

A review of the fabrication of polysaccharide ion gels with ionic liquids is presented. From various polysaccharides, the corresponding ion gels were fabricated through the dissolution with ionic liquids. As ionic liquids, in the most cases, 1-butyl-3-methylimidazolium chloride has been used, whereas 1-allyl-3methylimidazolium acetate was specifically used for chitin. The resulting ion gels hav...

Stimulus-responsive or “smart” gels are of potential interest as sensors and actuators, in industrial separations, and as permeable delivery systems [1]. In most applications, a certain degree of mechanical strength and toughness will be required, yet the large-strain behavior of gels has not been widely reported. Some exceptions include work on gelatin [2] and other food gels [3], some charact...

Fibroblasts can contract collagen gels, a process thought to be related to tissue remodeling. Because epithelial cells are also involved in repair responses, we postulated that human bronchial epithelial cells (HBECs) could cause contraction of collagen gels. To evaluate this, HBECs were plated on the top of native type I collagen gels and were incubated for 48 h. After this, the gels were rele...

Consisting of alternating swelling and nonswelling polymeric layers (SLs and NLs), lamellar gels are one-dimensional photonic crystals with mechanically tunable optical properties. The lamellar structure induces a constraint between the SLs and the NLs, resulting in a highly anisotropic swelling behavior that is coupled with deformation. The coupling gives rise to the mechanochromatic effect, i...