Researchers Create ‘Smart’ Material With Antifouling Potential
PROVIDENCE, RI – Brown University researchers have shown a way to use graphene oxide (GO) to add some backbone to hydrogel materials made from alginate, a natural material derived from seaweed that’s currently used in a variety of biomedical applications. In a paper published in the journal Carbon, the researchers describe a 3-D printing method for making intricate and durable alginate-GO structures that are far stiffer and more fracture resistant that alginate alone.
“One limiting factor in the use of alginate hydrogels is that they’re very fragile — they tend to fall apart under mechanical load or in low salt solutions,” said Thomas Valentin, a Ph.D. student in Brown’s School of Engineering who led the work. “What we showed is by including graphene oxide nanosheets, we can make these structures much more robust.”