Hi I am trying to make gelatin methacrylate and I've reached the final step of freeze drying it. There seems to be a lot of protocols for freeze drying with varying temperature and pressure settings. What should I use for gelatin methacrylate? Most papers only cite "freeze dry for 1 week" which is rather vague. Please help.
Generic references about freeze drying may possibly be found helpful: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Does_anyone_know_of_a_good_review_paper_on_freeze_drying
Drying with hot air may possibly be considered. As I have mentioned elsewhere at this forum, a thin gelatin gel film, obtained by cooling a sufficiently concentrated sol or solution, can typically be dried in laboratory oven with forced air at 65 ºC: https://www.researchgate.net/post/Can_anyone_suggest_a_method_to_coat_surgical_grade_titanium_with_a_gelatin_based_film
Dear Xuxim,
We describe the complete procedure in our paper: http://www.nature.com/nprot/journal/v11/n4/full/nprot.2016.037.html
Simply freeze-dry until there is no more change of weight. After one week, I usually take a few aliqots of the freeze-drier and weigh them, then put them back on for another day. If they are still losing weight, it's not fully dried yet.
I don't recommend drying by heat as this reduces the volume and concentrates the GelMA and leads to issues with the reconstitution.
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