HYDROGEL PHOTO-MODULABLE WITH HIGH SPATIAL AND TEMPORAL RESOLUTION

  Because of their large potential in biorelated applications, hydrogels post-modulable in desired time and space domains attract particular attention.  Toward this goal, most promising are photolatently reactive hydrogels. In this work, we developed photolatently modulable hydrogels, composed of a polymer network accommodating photocatalytic titania nanosheet at every crosslinking point.

  Since titania nanosheet can utilize gelling water as the source of radicals, its long-lasting photocatalysis makes the hydrogels readily modulable whenever needed.  As demonstrated by photo-micropatterning, non-diffusible titania nanosheets at the crosslinking points enable pointwise modulations with an excellent spatial and temporal resolution.