Novel Collagen Surgical Patches for Local Delivery of Multiple Drugs.

Effective control of post-operative inflammation after tissue repair remains a clinical challenge. A tissue repair patch that could appropriately integrate into the surrounding tissue and control inflammatory responses would improve tissue healing. A collagen-based hybrid tissue repair patch has been developed in this work for the local delivery of an anti-inflammatory drug. Dexamethasone (DEX) was encapsulated into PLGA microspheres and then co-electrocompacted into a collagen membrane. Using a simple process, multiple drugs can be loaded into and released from this hybrid composite material simultaneously, and the ratio between each drug is controllable. Anti-inflammatory DEX and the anti-epileptic phenytoin (PHT) were co-encapsulated and released to validate the dual drug delivery ability of this versatile composite material. Furthermore, the Young's modulus of this drug-loaded collagen patch was increased to 20 KPa using a biocompatible riboflavin (vitamin B2)-induced UV light cross-linking strategy. This versatile composite material has a wide range of potential applications which deserve exploration in further research.

Proving Scalability of an Organic Semiconductor To Print a TFT-Active Matrix Using a Roll-to-Roll Gravure.

Organic semiconductor-based thin-film transistors' (TFTs) charge-carrier mobility has been enhanced up to 25 cm2/V s through the improvement of fabrication methods and greater understanding of the microstructure charge-transport mechanism. To expand the practical feasibility of organic semiconductor-based TFTs, their electrical properties should be easily accessed from the fully printed devices through a scalable printing method, such as a roll-to-roll (R2R) gravure. In this study, four commercially available organic semiconductors were separately formulated into gravure inks. They were then employed in the R2R gravure system (silver ink for printing gate and drain-source electrodes and BaTiO3 ink for printing dielectric layers) for printing 20 × 20 TFT-active matrix with the resolution of 10 pixels per inch on poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PET) foils to attain electrical properties of organic semiconductors a practical printing method. Electrical characteristics (mobility, on-off current ratio, threshold voltage, and transconductance) of the R2R gravure-printed 20 × 20 TFT-active matrices fabricated with organic semiconducting ink were analyzed statistically, and the results showed more than 98% device yield and 50 % electrical variations in the R2R gravure TFT-active matrices along the PET web.