Usually, people crosslink the alginate gel, freeze it, and lyophilize to produce porous structures. I want to know whether anyone has tried lyophilization first to create pores, followed by crosslinking (e.g. by immersion in calcium chloride solution). Are the properties of the scaffolds produced in these 2 ways different?
This will probably not work how you would like:
If you plan to make an alginate solution and then lyophilise it you will create a porous structure. But the structure will have air trapped in it, causing it to float on the top of your CaCl2 solution. But if you could force the solution into it...
There are two possible scenarios, both of which are disavantageous. One scenarios is that the alginate molecules will re-hydrate, dissolve and you'll lose the structure you created in the first place. The other scenario is that the molecules will have squashed together so tightly that they wont re-hydrate properly, they wont dissolve, but they also wont cross-link properly.
I haven't done this with alginate but I'm pretty sure that this is what would happen based on my experiences with gellan gum which cross-links in a similar way.
Damian, thanks for your insights. Do you know any group who tried to create customized porous structures with gellan gum? what strategies do they use?
I've created porous gellan gum structures by lyophilising calcium cross-linked gellan gum hydrogels. But they will dissolve when immersed in water again.
Gellan gum seems to be a little less permanent than alginate in that respect.
My research group does lots of work with ionically cross-linked hydrogels if you're interested in looking us up. Visit my supervisor's twitter https://twitter.com/SoftMaterials.
- Badges
- Science topic
- Similar topics
- Chemistry
- Biochemistry
- Biochemical Techniques
- Blotting Techniques
- Immunoblotting
- Dyes