Electrospinning of highly aligned and covalently cross‐linked hydrogel microfibers

Abstract

Smart polyelectrolyte hydrogels are increasingly studied toward the realization of soft microactuators. This study focuses on the fabrication of highly aligned and covalently cross‐linked polyacrylamide hydrogel microfibers by electrospinning technique following two‐stage polymerization. The engineering of the reaction timescale of the precursor, such that the material gels shortly after spinning, is described and the design of the electrospinning setup, to generate highly aligned fibers, is presented. In addition the effect of the operating parameters on the fibers average diameter is investigated. The generated fibers are 15 cm long with average diameter ranging between 100 nm and 1.10 μm. The fibers diameter is controlled by adjusting the thickener type and concentration in the precursor and the electrospinning processing parameters. Thinner fibers are generated at lower thickener molecular weights and concentrations as well at lower flow rate and higher voltage. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2014, 131, 41092.

Advances in cellulose-based superabsorbent hydrogels

“…In addition, highly aligned and covalently crosslinked hydrogel microbers were obtained by the electrospinning technique, which provides a safe approach to fabricate nanoscale to microscale bers. 37 The resulting cellulose-based superabsorbent hydrogel microbers show great potential use in active biological tissues such as the replacement of damaged muscle tissue.…”

Templating polyacrylamide hydrogel for interconnected microstructure and improved performance

“…They are defined as crosslinked macromolecular networks formed by hydrophilic polymers that absorb large amounts of water and biological fluid while maintaining their three‐dimensional stability . These soft, smart, and stimuli‐responsive materials are chemosensitive, electroactive under low driving voltage, and biocompatible . They are extensively used in the development of artificial implants such as artificial muscles or soft actuators and scaffolds that mimic the native extracellular matrices …”

“…Extensive work has been reported on the sensing properties and actuation mechanism of PAAM hydrogels as on their application as scaffolds for tissue engineering . However, few of them are concerned about the effect of the thermodynamic parameters like temperature and pressure, applied during the free radical polymerization, on the properties of the resulting hydrogel .…”