Degradable hydrogels to deliver bioactive proteins represent an emerging platform for promoting tissue repair and vascularization in various applications. However, implanting these biomaterials requires invasive surgery, which is associated with complications such as inflammation, scarring, and infection. To address these shortcomings, we applied microfluidics-based polymerization to engineer i...

Development of materials with an antimicrobial activity is fundamental for different sectors, including medicine and health care, water and air treatment, and food packaging. Electrospinning is a versatile and economic technique that allows the incorporation of different natural, industrial, and clinical agents into a wide variety of polymers and blends in the form of micro/nanofibers. Furtherm...

A continuous near-field electrospinning NFES process has been developed to deposit solid nanofibers with orderly patterns over large areas. Before the onset of electrospinning, a bias voltage is applied to a semispherical shaped polymer droplet outside of a syringe needle, and a probe tip mechanically draws a single fiber from the droplet to initiate continuous NFES. Contrary to the conventiona...

Two microgel particles are encapsulated in a microdrop having a spherical diameter smaller than the sum of the diameters of the microgels; this causes the microgels to be squeezed together by the oil–water interface of the drop, in turn, making the drop ellipsoidal in shape. By modeling the force applied to the microgels by the drop and equating this to the Hertz contact force of their deformat...

Photothermally driven volume transitions in polymer microgels have promising applications for site-specific drug delivery and photodynamic therapy. We studied the temperature-induced volume phase transitions for a series of thermoresponsive microgels of various compositions to find a system with a sharp transition in the physiologically relevant range spanning 38-41 degrees C in 0.01 M phosphat...

Ordinarily, the electrospinning process generates one-dimensional fibers which assemble into nonwoven membrane structures due to instabilities in the fluid jet. In this paper, an electrospinning procedure is developed that utilizes patterned collectors to produce aligned membranes with designed topological structures. The template-assisted electrospinning approach is demonstrated using polycapr...

We present a systematic study of self-cross-linked microgels formed by precipitation polymerization of oligo ethylene glycol methacrylates. The cross-linking density of these microgels and, thus, the network flexibility can be easily tuned through the modulation of the reaction temperature during polymerization. Microgels prepared in absence of any difunctional monomer, i.e. cross-linker, show ...