Mimicking the Secretory Action of a Gland by a Composite System Made of a pH-Responsive Surfactant-Based Hydrogel and a Dialysis Membrane

Abstract

The hydrogel obtained by a zwitterionic Noxide surfactant is proposed as the core of a pH-responsive artificial gland model. The viscosity and pH variations, induced by pulse additions of acid and base, are investigated by a pyridinium salt and alizarin red S, respectively. The artificial gland model is implemented by enclosing the gel within a dialysis membrane, and its secretory action is tested by monitoring the release of a fluorescent acridinium salt.

A novel 18β-glycyrrhetinic acid derivative supramolecular self-assembly hydrogel with antibacterial activity

“…GA-O-20 was dissolved in series of solutions (Table 1) accompanied by heating, then cooled to room temperature. According to the tube-inversion experiments [34,35], it was found that only in ethanol-water systems has a tendency to form hydrogels. Therefore, the volume ratios of the mixed solvents ethanol-water (Table 2 and Fig.…”

Probing the structural features and the micro-heterogeneity of various deep eutectic solvents and their water dilutions by the photophysical behaviour of two fluorophores

“…Moreover, the excited state deactivation of PyI is characterized by the formation of a twisted intramolecular charge transfer state (TICT) and it is thus ruled by viscosity [53]. On the other hand, X5 features an acidic centre on the central phenanthroline nitrogens with a pKa of 5.74, and its spectral properties are thus sensitive to the acidity of the environment [52] and H-bonding ability of the HBD component forming the DES.…”

“…In order to shed light on the structural features of a set of differently structured DESs, a spectroscopic femtosecond-resolved study is proposed in this work with the use of suitable fluorescence probes, whose photophysical properties and excited state dynamics have already been deeply investigated in our laboratory [50][51][52][53][54]. Specifically, an N-methylpyridinium iodide (2-4-(diphenylamino)phenyl-ethenyl-1-methylpyridinium iodide, PyI) was chosen as a polarity and viscosity probe, while a phenanthroline derivative (4,4'-((1E,1'E)-(1,10-phenanthroline-2,9diyl)bis(ethene-2,1-diyl))bis(3-methoxy-N,N-dimethylaniline, X5), showing fluorosolvatochromism and bearing protonation sites, was used as polarity and H-bond probe.…”

Laser defined and driven bio-inspired soft robots toward complex motion control

“…A variety of materials have been exploited as active materials for actuator configuration, including carbon materials, 18,20 MXene (two-dimensional metal carbide), 21 hydrogels, [22][23][24] responsive polymers, 25,26 phase-changing materials, 27,28 electrothermal materials, 11,29 photothermal materials, 30,31 piezoelectric materials, 32 etc. Among these materials, graphene and its derivatives are ideal candidates due to their light weight, excellent flexibility, multi-responsive nature, easy modification and processing.…”