Kocik, M.K., Mykhaylyk, O.O. and Armes, S.P. (2014) Aqueous worm gels can be reconstituted from freeze-dried diblock copolymer powder. Soft Matter, 10. pp. 3984-3992.
Abstract
Worm-like diblock copolymer nanoparticles comprising poly(glycerol monomethacrylate) (PGMA) as a stabilizer block and poly(2-hydroxypropyl methacrylate) (PHPMA) as a core-forming block were readily synthesized at 10% w/w solids via aqueous dispersion polymerization at 70 °C using Reversible Addition-Fragmentation chain Transfer (RAFT) chemistry. On cooling to 20 °C, soft transparent free-standing gels are formed due to multiple inter-worm interactions. These aqueous PGMA-PHPMA diblock copolymer worms were freeze-dried, then redispersed in water with cooling to 3-5 °C before warming up to 20 °C; this protocol ensures molecular dissolution of the copolymer chains, which aids formation of a transparent aqueous gel. Rheology, SAXS and TEM studies confirm that such reconstituted gels comprise formed PGMA-PHPMA copolymer worms and they possess essentially the same physical properties determined for the original worm gels prior to freeze-drying. Such worm gel reconstitution is expected to be highly beneficial in the context of various biomedical applications, since it enables worm gels to be readily prepared using a wide range of cell growth media as the continuous aqueous phase.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2014 The Author(s). This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Sheffield |
Academic Units: | The University of Sheffield > Faculty of Science (Sheffield) > Department of Chemistry (Sheffield) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Sheffield |
Date Deposited: | 20 Jun 2014 12:45 |
Last Modified: | 20 Jun 2014 12:45 |
Published Version: | http://dx.doi.org/10.1039/c4sm00415a |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | RSC Publishing |
Refereed: | Yes |
Identification Number: | 10.1039/c4sm00415a |
Related URLs: | |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:79456 |