Soft Functionally Gradient Materials and Structures - Natural and Manmade: A Review.

Functionally gradient materials (FGM) have gradual variations in their properties along one or more dimensions due to local compositional or structural distinctions by design. Traditionally, hard materials (e.g.

Dynamic cross-linking of an alginate-acrylamide tough hydrogel system: time-resolved mapping of gel self-assembly.

Hydrogels are a popular class of biomaterial that are used in a number of commercial applications (; contact lenses, drug delivery, and prophylactics). Alginate-based tough hydrogel systems, interpenetrated with acrylamide, reportedly form both ionic and covalent cross-links, giving rise to their remarkable mechanical properties. In this work, we explore the nature, onset and extent of such hybrid bonding interactions between the complementary networks in a model double-network alginate-acrylamide system, using a host of characterisation techniques (; FTIR, Raman, UV-vis, and fluorescence spectroscopies), in a time-resolved manner.