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Hydrogels

Structure starts to gel

Nature Materials volume 7, pages 271–273 (2008)Cite this article

The new generation of hydrogels moves away from the bulk materials of old, to those with multilayered, complex internal structures and controllable physical properties.

Hydrogels are formed by crosslinking polymer chains — through physical, ionic or covalent interactions — and are well known for their ability to absorb water. In most cases, they are homogeneous materials, and their bulk properties are characterized and considered with regard to applications. From a biomedical perspective, they show promise in a number of areas including devices, drug delivery and regenerative medicine1. Hydrogels are already widely used as three-dimensional cell and tissue culture environments, as they are excellent mimics of the in vivo state.

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Figure 1: Multimembrane chitosan-based hydrogels.
Figure 2: A schematic of neutralization and membrane-formation steps.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Jennifer Elisseeff is in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland 21218, USA. jhe@jhu.edu,

    Jennifer Elisseeff

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  1. Jennifer Elisseeff
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Elisseeff, J. Structure starts to gel. Nature Mater 7, 271–273 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1038/nmat2147

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