A team led by Darrin Pochan, University of Delaware, Newark, USA, studied hydrogel behavior during and after stress-induced flow to discover the underlying mechanisms of the gel shear-thinning and healing processes.
Hydrogel solids have significant potential for use in injectable therapies as they stay localized at the region of injection but don’t require surgery.
Results of structural analysis during flow were related to bulk rheological behavior and indicated gel network fracture into large (>200 nm) hydrogel domains during flow. After cessation of flow the large hydrogel domains are immediately percolated which immediately reforms the solid hydrogel…
Read the full article here: Congqi Yan, Aysegul Altunbas, Tuna Yucel, Radhika P. Nagarkar, Joel P. Schneider and Darrin J. Pochan, Soft Matter, 2010, DOI: 10.1039/C0SM00642D
