Da Silva, A.C. orcid.org/0000-0002-6258-9506, Wang, J. and Minev, I.R. (2022) Electro-assisted printing of soft hydrogels via controlled electrochemical reactions. Nature Communications, 13 (1). 1353.
Abstract
Hydrogels underpin many applications in tissue engineering, cell encapsulation, drug delivery and bioelectronics. Methods improving control over gelation mechanisms and patterning are still needed. Here we explore a less-known gelation approach relying on sequential electrochemical–chemical–chemical (ECC) reactions. An ionic species and/or molecule in solution is oxidised over a conductive surface at a specific electric potential. The oxidation generates an intermediate species that reacts with a macromolecule, forming a hydrogel at the electrode–electrolyte interface. We introduce potentiostatic control over this process, allowing the selection of gelation reactions and control of hydrogel growth rate. In chitosan and alginate systems, we demonstrate precipitation, covalent and ionic gelation mechanisms. The method can be applied in the polymerisation of hybrid systems consisting of more than one polymer. We demonstrate concomitant deposition of the conductive polymer Poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene) (PEDOT) and alginate. Deposition of the hydrogels occurs in small droplets held between a conductive plate (working electrode, WE), a printing nozzle (counter electrode, CE) and a pseudoreference electrode (reference electrode, RE). We install this setup on a commercial 3D printer to demonstrate patterning of adherent hydrogels on gold and flexible ITO foils. Electro-assisted printing may contribute to the integration of well-defined hydrogels on hybrid electronic-hydrogel devices for bioelectronics applications.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2022 The Author(s). This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Engineering (Sheffield) > Department of Automatic Control and Systems Engineering (Sheffield) |
Funding Information: | Funder Grant number European Commission - HORIZON 2020 804005 |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 23 Mar 2022 09:35 |
Last Modified: | 23 Mar 2022 09:35 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | Springer Nature |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1038/s41467-022-29037-6 |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:184994 |