156 Results Found

Diabetic wounds are therapeutically challenging because of the complex and adverse microenvironment that impedes healing. Unlike conventional wound dressings, hydrogels provide antibacterial, anti-inflammatory, and repair-promoting functions. In this...

Stimulus-responsive hydrogels are an important member of smart materials owing to their reversibility, soft/wet properties, and biocompatibility, which have a wide range of applications in the field of intelligent actuations. However, poor mechanical...

We report a near-infrared (NIR) light-responsive hydrogel that is capable of undergoing the gel to sol transition upon 785 nm light exposure based on a photothermal effect. The new hydrogel design relies on loading gold nanorods (AuNRs) in an ABA-typ...

The locomotor behavior of creatures in nature can bring a lot of inspiration for the fabrication of soft actuators. In this paper, we fabricated a bionic light-driven swimming soft robot that can perform grasping of tiny objects and achieve the task...

Soft actuators based on hydrogel materials, which can convert light energy directly into mechanical energy, are of the utmost importance, especially with enhancements in device development. However, the hunt for specific photothermal nanomaterials wi...

Light-responsive hydrogels containing light-thermal convertible pigments have received interest for their possible applications in light-responsive shutters, valves, drug delivery systems, etc. However, their utility is limited by the slow response t...

Protein therapeutics have become increasingly popular for the treatment of a variety of diseases owing to their specificity to targets of interest. However, challenges associated with them have limited their use for a range of ailments, including the...

Smart hydrogels are typical functional soft materials, but their functional and mechanical properties are compromised upon micro- or macro-mechanical damage. In contrast, hydrogels with self-healing properties overcome this limitation. Herein, a dual...

Light-degradable hydrogels have a wide range of application prospects in the field of biomedicine. However, the provision of a facile synthetic approach to light-degradable hydrogels under mild conditions remains a challenge for researchers. To surmo...

Multifunctional biomedical materials capable of integrating optical functions are highly desirable for many applications, such as advanced intra-ocular lens (IOL) implants. Therefore, poly(ethylene glycol)-diacrylate (PEG-DA) hydrogels are used with...

In recent years, significant advancements in the field of advanced materials and hydrogel engineering have enabled the design and fabrication of smart hydrogels and nanogels that exhibit sensitivity to specific signals or pathological conditions, lea...

Temperature and light responsiveness are widely exploited stimuli to tune the physico-chemical properties of double network hydrogels. In this work, new amphiphilic poly(ether urethane)s bearing photo-sensitive moieties (i.e., thiol, acrylate and nor...

Tea polyphenols (TP) offer health benefits, but their stability is compromised by sensitivity to environmental factors, limiting their applications. Developing stimulus-responsive delivery systems that precisely control TP release is essential. This...

Temperature-responsive Poly-N-isopropylacrylamide (PNIPAAm) hydrogels were modified with graphene oxide (GO) nanoparticles to increase the light absorption significantly and these gels can be heated and stimulated optothermically. These light-respons...

Cancer remains as the second leading cause of death, worldwide. Despite the enormous important advances observed in the last decades, advanced stages of the disease remain incurable. The severe side effects associated to systemic high doses of chemot...

The combination of gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) with hydrogels has drawn significant interest in the design of smart materials as advanced platforms for biomedical applications. These systems endow light-responsiveness enabled by the AuNPs localized su...

Soft biological tissues perform various functions. Sensory nerves bring sensations of light, voice, touch, pain, or temperature variation to the central nervous system. Animal senses have inspired tremendous sensors for biomedical applications. Follo...

Azobenzene photoswitches are fundamental components in contemporary approaches aimed at light-driven control of intelligent materials. Significant endeavors are directed towards enhancing the light-triggered reactivity of azobenzenes for such applica...

A three-dimensional (3D) scaffold ideally provides hierarchical complexity and imitates the chemistry and mechanical properties of the natural cell environment. Here, we report on a stimuli-responsive photo-cross-linkable resin formulation for the fa...

Phytochromes are bistable red/far-red light-responsive photoreceptor proteins found in plants, fungi, and bacteria. Light-activation of the prototypical phytochrome Cph1 from the cyanobacterium Synechocystis sp. PCC 6803 allows photoisomerization of...

Shape-shifting polymers usually require not only reversible stimuli-responsive ability, but also strong mechanical properties. A novel shape-shifting photochromic hydrogel system was designed and fabricated by embedding hydrophobic spiropyran (SP) in...

Cancer remains one of the most prominent global health concerns, posing a substantial threat to public health. Millions of people die from cancer each year, and many cancer types remain incurable at present. Conventional cancer treatments, including...

Smart hydrogels, which combine hydrogel properties such as biocompatibility, high drug loading capacity, and injectability while being responsive to external stimuli, are a subclass of smart materials. Smart hydrogels respond to effects that are not...

Stimuli-responsive hydrogel actuators have attracted tremendous interest in switches and microrobots. Based on N-isopropylacrylamide (NIPAM) monomers with LCST phase separation and photochromic molecule spiropyran which can respond to ultraviolet lig...

The design of photo-responsive supramolecular hydrogels based on coumarin dimerization and de-dimerization is described. The photo-responsive coumarin unit is chemically incorporated into an oligo(ethylene glycol) (OEG) bis-urea amphiphile that is ca...

Hydrogels have emerged as promising candidates for biomedical applications, especially in the treatment of skin wounds, as a result of their unique structural properties, highly tunable physicochemical properties, and excellent biocompatibility. The...

Chronic wounds are a major health challenge that require new treatment strategies. Hydrogels are promising drug delivery systems for chronic wound healing because of their biocompatibility, hydration, and flexibility. However, conventional hydrogels...

Hydrogel, a material with outstanding biocompatibility and shape deformation ability, has recently become a hot topic for researchers studying innovative functional materials due to the growth of new biomedicine. Due to their stimulus responsiveness...

Stimuli-responsive hydrogels have emerged as a promising class of biomaterials for advanced wound healing applications, offering dynamic and controllable responses to the wound microenvironment. These hydrogels are designed to respond to specific sti...

Hydrogels are attractive biomaterials with favorable characteristics due to their water uptake capacity. However, hydrogel properties are determined by the cross-linking degree and nature, the tacticity, and the crystallinity of the polymer. These bi...

Since the last few decades, the development of smart hydrogels, which can respond to stimuli and adapt their responses based on external cues from their environments, has become a thriving research frontier in the biomedical engineering field. Nowada...

Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (PNIPAM) based electrically conductive hydrogels (PNIPAM-ECHs) have been extensively studied in recent decades due to their thermal-responsive (leading to the volume change of hydrogels) and electrically conductive perform...

Stimuli-responsive color-changing and shape-changing hydrogels are promising intelligent materials for visual detections and bio-inspired actuations, respectively. However, it is still an early stage to integrate the color-changing performance and sh...

Biomedicine is constantly evolving to ensure a significant and positive impact on healthcare, which has resulted in innovative and distinct requisites such as hydrogels. Chitosan-based formulations stand out for their versatile utilization in drug en...

Hydrogels are endowed with exceptional hydrophilicity and biocompatibility by their network structure, while also exhibiting soft physical properties similar to living tissues, which renders them ideal biomaterials. Responsive hydrogels—particu...

Thermochromic smart windows realize an intelligent response to changes in environmental temperature through reversible physical phase transitions. They complete a real-time adjustment of solar transmittance, create a livable indoor temperature for hu...

Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) PNIPAAm hydrogels were modified with a new azobenzene-containing co-monomer. In this work, light responsiveness as an additional functionality, is conceptualized to induce two phase transitions in the same material, which...

Cancer is a highly heterogeneous disease and remains a global health challenge affecting millions of human lives worldwide. Despite advancements in conventional treatments like surgery, chemotherapy, and immunotherapy, the rise of multidrug resistanc...

In the rapidly evolving field of biomedical engineering, hydrogels have emerged as highly versatile biomaterials that bridge biology and technology through their high water content, exceptional biocompatibility, and tunable mechanical properties. Thi...

The low fluorescence quantum efficiency of hydrophilic modified spiropyran in hydrogel matrices cannot be naturally improved during photoresponsive operation, which significantly limits their practical applications.In this study, a hybrid hydrogel sy...

Herein we describe poly(ionic liquid) hydrogel actuators that are capable of responding to multiple stimuli, namely temperature, ionic strength and white light irradiation. Using two starting materials, a crosslinked poly ionic liquid (PIL) and a l...

Functional hydrogels are a growing class of soft materials. Functional hydrogels are characterized by their three-dimensional (3D) polymeric network and high water-retention capacity. Functional hydrogels are deliberately engineered with specific che...

Shape-shifting polymers are widely used in various fields such as intelligent switches, soft robots and sensors, which require both multiple stimulus-response functions and qualified mechanical strength. In this study, a novel near-infrared-light (NI...

Hydrogels are hydrophilic, three-dimensional networks that are able to absorb large quantities of water or biological fluids, and thus have the potential to be used as prime candidates for biosensors, drug delivery vectors, and carriers or matrices f...

Hydrogel is a type of crosslinked three-dimensional polymer network structure gel. It can swell and hold a large amount of water but does not dissolve. It is an excellent membrane material for ion transportation. As transport channels, the chemical s...

We propose a method to print four-dimensional (4D) stimuli-responsive hydrogel structures with internal gaps. Our 4D structures are fabricated by printing an N-isopropylacrylamide-based stimuli-responsive pre-gel solution (NIPAM-based ink) and an acr...

DNA hydrogels are self-assembled biomaterials that rely on Watson–Crick base pairing to form large-scale programmable three-dimensional networks of nanostructured DNA components. The unique mechanical and biochemical properties of DNA, along with its...

Rheumatoid arthritis (RA) is a chronic autoimmune disease that imposes substantial physical, emotional, and socioeconomic burdens on patients. Conventional therapeutic approaches are often limited by systemic toxicity, inadequate joint targeting, and...

Colorimetric indicator gels were developed by incorporating anthocyanin (AC) obtained from red cabbage into poly (ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEGDA)-based hydrogel containing lignocellulose nanofiber (LCNF). The PEGDA-based hydrogel was prepared by...

Polymeric materials have found increasing use in biomedical applications in the last decades. Among them, hydrogels represent the chosen class of materials to use in this field, in particular as wound dressings. They are generally non-toxic, biocompa...