Abstract: Hydrogels have received significant attention, especially in the past 30 years mainly because of their exceptional promise in biomedical applications, particularly in tissue engineering, as scaffold for cell growth, and in drug delivery applications, as controlled delivery devices. They are three-dimensional networks of hydrophilic polymers held together by covalent bonds or other cohesive forces such as hydrogen or ionic bonds. They are glassy in the dry state and then, in the presence of solvents, able to swell while preserving their original shape to form elastic gels. Being capable of retaining a large amount of water in their structure (up to 95% of the total weight), they can either degrade in it by polymer chain degradation reactions (e.g. hydrolysis or proteolysis into smaller molecules) and are then called resorbable hydrogels or they cannot and are then called stable hydrogels. These scaffolds slowly degrade in the physiological environment, leading the growing tissue to replace the former filled site.
Publication Year: 2019
Publication Date: 2019-02-13
Language: en
Type: other
Indexed In: ['crossref']
Access and Citation
Cited By Count: 1
AI Researcher Chatbot
Get quick answers to your questions about the article from our AI researcher chatbot