Recent advances in microgels: from biomolecules to functionality
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Authors
Xu, Yufan
Denduluri, Akhila
Ou, Yangteng
Erkamp, Nadia A
Qi, Runzhang
Shen, Yi
Knowles, Tuomas
Journal Title
Small
ISSN
1613-6810
Publisher
Wiley
Type
Article
This Version
VoR
Metadata
Show full item recordCitation
Xu, Y., Zhu, H., Denduluri, A., Ou, Y., Erkamp, N. A., Qi, R., Shen, Y., & et al. Recent advances in microgels: from biomolecules to functionality. Small https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.202200180
Abstract
The emerging applications for hydrogel materials at different length scales, in areas ranging from sustainability to health, has driven the progress in the design and manufacturing of microgels. Microgels can provide miniaturized, monodisperse, and regulatable compartments, which can be spatially separated or interconnected. These microscopic materials provide novel opportunities for providing biomimetic cell culture environments and are thus key to the advances of modern biomedical research. The evolution of our understanding of the physical and chemical properties has, furthermore, highlighted the potentials of microgels in the context of materials science and bioengineering. This review describes the recent research progress in the fabrication, characterization, and applications of microgels generated from biomolecular building blocks. A key enabling technology allowing the tailoring of the properties of microgels is their synthesis through microfluidic technologies and we highlight recent advances in this areas and their impact on expanding the physicochemical parameter space accessible using microgels. We finally discussed the emerging roles that microgels play in liquid–liquid phase separation, micromechanics, biosensors, and regenerative medicine.
Identifiers
External DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/smll.202200180
This record's URL: https://www.repository.cam.ac.uk/handle/1810/335351
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