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Anisotropic wood-hydrogel composites: Extending mechanical properties of wood towards soft materials’ applications

Delignified wood (DW) offers a versatile platform for the manufacturing of composites, with material properties ranging from stiff to soft and flexible by preserving the preferential fiber directionality of natural wood through a structure-retaining production process. This study presents a facile m...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Koch, Sophie Marie, Goldhahn, Christian, Müller, Florence J., Yan, Wenqing, Pilz-Allen, Christine, Bidan, Cécile M., Ciabattoni, Beatrice, Stricker, Laura, Fratzl, Peter, Keplinger, Tobias, Burgert, Ingo
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: Elsevier 2023
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10477686/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/37674781
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.mtbio.2023.100772
Descripción
Sumario:Delignified wood (DW) offers a versatile platform for the manufacturing of composites, with material properties ranging from stiff to soft and flexible by preserving the preferential fiber directionality of natural wood through a structure-retaining production process. This study presents a facile method for fabricating anisotropic and mechanically tunable DW-hydrogel composites. These composites were produced by infiltrating delignified spruce wood with an aqueous gelatin solution followed by chemical crosslinking. The mechanical properties could be modulated across a broad strength and stiffness range (1.2–18.3 MPa and 170–1455 MPa, respectively) by varying the crosslinking time. The diffusion-led crosslinking further allowed to manufacture mechanically graded structures. The resulting uniaxial, tubular structure of the anisotropic DW-hydrogel composite enabled the alignment of murine fibroblasts in vitro, which could be utilized in future studies on potential applications in tissue engineering.