Influence of TX-100 on the size controlled synthesis of gold colloid.

Gold colloids were synthesized via mixing the aqueous solution of HAuCl(4) and Triton X-100 at room temperature. The gold sol samples were quickly obtained during first 2h then the samples were placed for 8h to ensure they were completely stable. The colour of most samples turned to violet red. But the sample with 0.5ml TX-100 remained colorless. During synthesizing, UV-vis absorption spectra were recorded every 10s. By studying the synthesis time-dependent surface plasmon resonance (SPR), we found that the growth of gold colloids presented an exponential increase form. By analyzing the TX-100 concentration dependence of absorption peak, the effect of TX-100 concentration on gold colloid diameter was studied and the gold colloid's final dimension was resulted from competition between reducing speed and coating speed.

Engineering ellipsoidal cap-like hydrogel particles as building blocks or sacrificial templates for three-dimensional cell culture.

Hydrogel particles that can be engineered to compartmentally culture cells in a three-dimensional (3D) and high-throughput manner have attracted increasing interest in the biomedical area. However, the ability to generate hydrogel particles with specially designed structures and their potential biomedical applications need to be further explored. This work introduces a method for fabricating hydrogel particles in an ellipsoidal cap-like shape (i.e., ellipsoidal cap-like hydrogel particles) by employing an open-pore anodic aluminum oxide membrane. Hydrogel particles of different sizes are fabricated. The ability to produce ellipsoidal cap-like magnetic hydrogel particles with controlled distribution of magnetic nanoparticles is demonstrated. Encapsulated cells show high viability, indicating the potential for using these hydrogel particles as structure- and remote-controllable building blocks for tissue engineering application. Moreover, the hydrogel particles are also used as sacrificial templates for fabricating ellipsoidal cap-like concave wells, which are further applied for producing size controllable cell aggregates. The results are beneficial for the development of hydrogel particles and their applications in 3D cell culture.