Centre for Misfolding Diseases, Yusuf Hamied Department of Chemistry, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, CB2 1EW, UK.
School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW, 2006, Australia.
Small. 2022 Aug;18(34):e2200180. doi: 10.1002/smll.202200180. Epub 2022 Jul 5.
The emerging applications of hydrogel materials at different length scales, in areas ranging from sustainability to health, have driven the progress in the design and manufacturing of microgels. Microgels can provide miniaturized, monodisperse, and regulatable compartments, which can be spatially separated or interconnected. These microscopic materials provide novel opportunities for generating biomimetic cell culture environments and are thus key to the advances of modern biomedical research. The evolution of the physical and chemical properties has, furthermore, highlighted the potentials of microgels in the context of materials science and bioengineering. This review describes the recent research progress in the fabrication, characterization, and applications of microgels generated from biomolecular building blocks. A key enabling technology allowing the tailoring of the properties of microgels is their synthesis through microfluidic technologies, and this paper highlights recent advances in these areas and their impact on expanding the physicochemical parameter space accessible using microgels. This review finally discusses the emerging roles that microgels play in liquid-liquid phase separation, micromechanics, biosensors, and regenerative medicine.
水凝胶材料在不同尺度上的新兴应用，涵盖了从可持续性到健康等领域，推动了微凝胶的设计和制造的进展。微凝胶可以提供小型化、单分散和可调节的隔室，这些隔室可以空间分离或相互连接。这些微观材料为生成仿生细胞培养环境提供了新的机会，因此是现代生物医学研究进展的关键。此外，物理和化学性质的演变突出了微凝胶在材料科学和生物工程背景下的潜力。本综述描述了基于生物分子构建块的微凝胶的制备、表征和应用的最新研究进展。允许微凝胶性质定制的关键使能技术是通过微流控技术进行它们的合成，本文强调了这些领域的最新进展及其对扩展使用微凝胶可获得的物理化学参数空间的影响。本综述最后讨论了微凝胶在液-液相分离、微力学、生物传感器和再生医学中新兴的作用。
