Ionotropic gelation fronts in sodium carboxymethyl cellulose for hydrogel particle formation
File(s)
Accepted version
Author(s)
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Hydrogel microparticles (HMPs) find numerous practical applications, ranging from drug delivery to tissue engineering. Designing HMPs from the molecular to macroscopic scales is required to exploit their full potential as functional materials. Here, we explore the gelation of sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (NaCMC), a model anionic polyelectrolyte, with Fe3+ cations in water. Gelation front kinetics are first established using 1D microfluidic experiments, and effective diffusive coefficients are found to increase with Fe3+ concentration and decrease with NaCMC concentrations. We use Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FTIR) to elucidate the Fe3+-NaCMC gelation mechanism and small angle neutron scattering (SANS) to spatio-temporally resolve the solution-to-network structure during front propagation. We find that the polyelectrolyte chain cross-section remains largely unperturbed by gelation and identify three hierarchical structural features at larger length scales. Equipped with the understanding of gelation mechanism and kinetics, using microfluidics, we illustrate the fabrication of range of HMP particles with prescribed morphologies
Date Issued
2021-06-01
Date Acceptance
2021-04-08
Citation
Gels, 2021, 7 (2)
ISSN
2310-2861
Publisher
MDPI
Journal / Book Title
Gels
Volume
7
Issue
2
Copyright Statement
© 2021 by the authors.
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article
distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
4.0/).
Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland.
This article is an open access article
distributed under the terms and
conditions of the Creative Commons
Attribution (CC BY) license (https://
creativecommons.org/licenses/by/
4.0/).
License URL
Identifier
http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000665131300001&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
Subjects
Science & Technology
Physical Sciences
Polymer Science
polyelectrolyte gel
sodium carboxymethyl cellulose
microparticles
hydrogel
small angle neutron scattering
ionic gelation
front propagation
FTIR
POLY(VINYL ALCOHOL)
PROPAGATING WAVES
POLYELECTROLYTES
BEHAVIOR
PHOTOPOLYMERIZATION
CONFORMATION
COUNTERIONS
FABRICATION
SCATTERING
DYNAMICS
Publication Status
Published
Article Number
ARTN 44