Design and Applications of Photoresponsive Hydrogels

Hydrogels are the most relevant biochemical scaffold due to their tunable properties, inherent biocompatibility, and similarity with tissue and cell environments. Over the past decade, hydrogels have developed from static materials to “smart” responsive materials adapting to various stimuli, such as...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Advanced materials (Weinheim) 2019-06, Vol.31 (26), p.e1807333-n/a
Main Authors: Li, Lei, Scheiger, Johannes M., Levkin, Pavel A.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
adaptive biomaterials
Biocompatibility
Biomedical materials
Electric contacts
Hydrogels
Light
light‐responsive materials
Materials science
Organic chemistry
Photons
Progress Report
Progress Reports
Properties (attributes)
Robotics
Scaffolds
smart materials
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Hydrogels are the most relevant biochemical scaffold due to their tunable properties, inherent biocompatibility, and similarity with tissue and cell environments. Over the past decade, hydrogels have developed from static materials to “smart” responsive materials adapting to various stimuli, such as pH, temperature, chemical, electrical, or light. Light stimulation is particularly interesting for many applications because of the capability of contact‐free remote manipulation of biomaterial properties and inherent spatial and temporal control. Moreover, light can be finely adjusted in its intrinsic properties, such as wavelength and intensity (i.e., the energy of an individual photon as well as the number of photons over time). Water is almost transparent for light in the photochemically relevant range (NIR–UV), thus hydrogels are well‐suited scaffolds for light‐responsive functionality. Hydrogels' chemical and physical variety combined with light responsiveness makes photoresponsive hydrogels ideal candidates for applications in several fields, ranging from biomaterials, medicine to soft robotics. Herein, the progress and new developments in the field of light‐responsive hydrogels are elaborated by first introducing the relevant photochemistries before discussing selected applications in detail. Originating from static scaffolds, hydrogels have entered the domain of stimuli‐responsive (smart) materials. Light as stimulus is of particular interest because it offers inherent spatiotemporal remote control over the stimulated response. Advances in the field of photoresponsive hydrogels are summarized with a focus on the molecular design and architecture, as well as the respective applications of these fascinating materials.
ISSN:0935-9648
1521-4095
1521-4095
DOI:10.1002/adma.201807333