Reinforcing hydrogels with formed amorphous CaCO.

Hydrogels are often employed for tissue engineering and moistening applications. However, they are rarely used for load-bearing purposes because of their limited stiffness and the stiffness-toughness compromise inherent to them. By contrast, nature uses hydrogel-based materials as scaffolds for load-bearing and protecting materials by mineralizing them.

Drug-Rich Phases Induced by Amorphous Solid Dispersion: Arbitrary or Intentional Goal in Oral Drug Delivery?

Among many methods to mitigate the solubility limitations of drug compounds, amorphous solid dispersion (ASD) is considered to be one of the most promising strategies to enhance the dissolution and bioavailability of poorly water-soluble drugs. The enhancement of ASD in the oral absorption of drugs has been mainly attributed to the high apparent drug solubility during the dissolution. In the last decade, with the implementations of new knowledge and advanced analytical techniques, a drug-rich transient metastable phase was frequently highlighted within the supersaturation stage of the ASD dissolution.

Monodisperse Selectively Permeable Hydrogel Capsules Made from Single Emulsion Drops.

Capsules are often used to protect chemical and biological entities from the environment, to control the timing and location of their release, or to facilitate the collection of waste. Their performance depends on the thickness and composition of their shells, which can be closely controlled if capsules are made from double emulsion drops that are produced with microfluidics. However, the fabrication of such double emulsions is delicate, limiting throughput and increasing costs.

Water: How Does It Influence the CaCO Formation?

Nature produces biomineral-based materials with a fascinating set of properties using only a limited number of elements. This set of properties is obtained by closely controlling the structure and local composition of the biominerals. We are far from achieving the same degree of control over the properties of synthetic biomineral-based composites.

Nacre-inspired Hard and Tough Materials.

Nature fabricates materials with properties that are difficult to reproduce with manmade counterparts. For example, nacre, composed of layers of CaCO₃ crystals that are interspaced with small quantities of organic components, is one of the toughest known biomaterials. To produce materials with such fascinating proper- ties, nature has established processes that offer an excellent control over their structure and local composition.

Amorphous CaCO: Influence of the Formation Time on Its Degree of Hydration and Stability.

Calcium carbonate (CaCO) is one of the most abundant biominerals that is prevalent in rocks and often used as a structural material in marine animals. Many of these natural CaCO-based materials display excellent mechanical properties that are difficult to reproduce by man-made counterparts. This difficulty arises from the incomplete understanding of the influence of processing conditions on the structure and composition of CaCO.

Fabrication of Hexagonal-Prismatic Granular Hydrogel Sheets.

Natural soft materials are often composed of proteins that self-assemble into well-defined structures and display mechanical properties that cannot be matched by manmade materials. These materials are frequently mimicked with hydrogels whose mechanical properties depend on their composition and the type and density of cross-links. Protocols to tune these parameters are well established and routinely used.