Anisotropic wood-hydrogel composites: Extending mechanical properties of wood towards soft materials' applications.
Mater Today Bio
; 22: 100772, 2023 Oct.
Article
in En
| MEDLINE
| ID: mdl-37674781
ABSTRACT
Delignified wood (DW) offers a versatile platform for the manufacturing of composites, with material properties ranging from stiff to soft and flexible by preserving the preferential fiber directionality of natural wood through a structure-retaining production process. This study presents a facile method for fabricating anisotropic and mechanically tunable DW-hydrogel composites. These composites were produced by infiltrating delignified spruce wood with an aqueous gelatin solution followed by chemical crosslinking. The mechanical properties could be modulated across a broad strength and stiffness range (1.2-18.3 MPa and 170-1455 MPa, respectively) by varying the crosslinking time. The diffusion-led crosslinking further allowed to manufacture mechanically graded structures. The resulting uniaxial, tubular structure of the anisotropic DW-hydrogel composite enabled the alignment of murine fibroblasts in vitro, which could be utilized in future studies on potential applications in tissue engineering.
Full text:
1
Collection:
01-internacional
Database:
MEDLINE
Language:
En
Journal:
Mater Today Bio
Year:
2023
Document type:
Article
Affiliation country:
Suiza