General method for the production of hydrogel droplets from uniformly sized smart shell membranes
발표자
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초록
내용
A smart solid-state liquid crystal (LCsolid) shell membrane template prepared by a microfluidic method with a reactive mesogen mixture of RMM727 (from Merck) doped with a nematic liquid crystal of 4ʹ-pentyl-4-biphenylcarbonitrile (5CB) as a porogen was used for a facile and general method to produce uniformly sized hydrogel droplets. Copolymer hydrogels and IPN hydrogels can be prepared based on the LCsolid shell template. Molar ratio of the copolymer hydrogel droplet composition could be easily altered by changing the mixing ratio of monomer mixture without tuning the processing conditions for droplet production, which is usually needed when using microfluidic devices. The proposed method can be used to obtain uniformly sized hydrogel droplets without using any instrument (e.g., microfluidic devices) or stabilizing material (e.g., surfactants) at any convenient time.