On the Determination of Mechanical Properties of Aqueous Microgels-Towards High-Throughput Characterization

Accelerated Engineering of Optimized Functional Composite Hydrogels via High-Throughput Experimentation

The Materials Genome Initiative (MGI) seeks to accelerate the discovery and engineering of advanced materials via high-throughput experimentation (HTE), which is a challenging task, given the common trade-off between design for optimal processability vs performance. Here, we report a HTE method based on automated formulation, synthesis, and multiproperty characterization of bulk soft materials in well plate formats that enables accelerated engineering of functional composite hydrogels with optimized properties for processability and performance. The method facilitates rapid high-throughput screening of hydrogel composition-property relations for multiple properties in well plate formats. The feasibility and utility of the method were demonstrated by application to several functional composite hydrogel systems, including alginate/poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) and poly(ethylene glycol) dimethacrylate (PEGDMA)/poly(3,4-ethylenedioxythiophene)-poly(styrenesulfonate) (PEDOT:PSS) hydrogels. The HTE method was leveraged to identify formulations of conductive PEGDMA/PEDOT:PSS composite hydrogels for optimized performance and processability in three-dimensional (3D) printing. This work provides an advance in experimental methods based on automated dispensing, mixing, and sensing for the accelerated engineering of soft functional materials.

Translating Material Science into Bone Regenerative Medicine Applications: State-of-The Art Methods and Protocols

In the last 20 years, bone regenerative research has experienced exponential growth thanks to the discovery of new nanomaterials and improved manufacturing technologies that have emerged in the biomedical field. This revolution demands standardization of methods employed for biomaterials characterization in order to achieve comparable, interoperable, and reproducible results. The exploited methods for characterization span from biophysics and biochemical techniques, including microscopy and spectroscopy, functional assays for biological properties, and molecular profiling. This review aims to provide scholars with a rapid handbook collecting multidisciplinary methods for bone substitute R&D and validation, getting sources from an up-to-date and comprehensive examination of the scientific landscape.

Microgels react to force: mechanical properties, syntheses, and force-activated functions

Microgels are colloidal polymer networks with high molar mass and properties between rigid particles, flexible macromolecules, and micellar aggregates. Their unique stimuli-responsiveness in conjunction with their colloidal phase behavior render them useful for many applications ranging from engineering to biomedicine. In many scenarios either the microgel's mechanical properties or its interactions with mechanical force play an important role. Here, we firstly explain microgel mechanical properties and how these are measured by atomic force microscopy (AFM), then we equip the reader with the synthetic background to understand how specific architectures and chemical functionalities enable these mechanical properties, and eventually we elucidate how the interaction of force with microgels can lead to the activation of latent functionality. Since the interaction of microgels with force is a multiscale and multidisciplinary subject, we introduce and interconnect the different research areas that contribute to the understanding of this emerging field in this Tutorial Review.