A microstructured silicon membrane with entrapped hydrogels for environmentally sensitive fluid gating

A Microstructured Silicon Membrane with Entrapped Hydrogels for Environmentally-Sensitive Fluid Gating

Controlled morphology of thin film silicon integrated with environmentally responsive hydrogels.

Environmentally responsive hydrogels hold multiple important applications. However, the functionality of these materials alone is often limited in comparison to other materials like silicon; thus, there is a need to integrate soft and hard materials for the advancement of environmentally sensitive materials. Here we demonstrate the capability of integrating a thermoresponsive hydrogel, poly(N-i...

Gating-by-tilt of mechanically sensitive membrane channels.

We propose an alternative mechanism for the gating of biological membrane channels in response to membrane tension that involves a change in the slope of the membrane near the channel. Under biological membrane tensions we show that the energy difference between the closed (tilted) and open (untilted) states can far exceed k(B)T and is comparable to what is available under simple dilational gat...

Environmentally Sensitive Protein Reagents*

The use of protein reagents which exhibit sensitivity to changes in molecular environment has provided a means of examining certain properties of enzymes during interaction with their substrates (1). The recently reported 2-hydroxy-5nitrobenzyl bromide provided one such reagent, the absorption spectrum of which showed sensitivity to environmental changes by virtue of the p-nitrophenolic groupin...

numerical analysis of temperature-sensitive hydrogels for controlled drug release

today hydrogels are considered as the materials that are able to play important role in drug delivery systems. to design an effective hydrogel applicable network, mathematical modeling has a critical role. a successful drug delivery device relies not only on intelligent network design but also on accurate prior mathematical modeling of drug release profiles. in this study, the modeling of the i...