Bulk hydrogels

Cells in miniaturized hydrogel Cells in bulk hydrogel... 

Fig. 18 Influence of the effective diffusion length on the response time of a hydrogel component, (a) Bulk hydrogel component. The effective diffusion length is (7a- (b) Component with hydrogel particles. The component volume equals with that of the bulk component. The effective diffusion length is approximately rp...

Some methods to characterize bulk hydrogel networks and immobilized hydrogel layers will be presented in Sections 4.3 and 4.4. 

Bulk hydrogel properties determine to a significant degree how suited a particular hydrogel is for a given applica-... 

Novel photoinitiated mechanisms of polymerization have also been developed to pattern cellular behavior within bulk hydrogel constmcts. For example, a sequential cross-linking technique was used to pattern MSG spreading within adhesive and enzymatically degradable HA... 

Gels are crosslinked networks of polymers that are insoluble in their dispersion medium. In case of hydrogels, the dispersion medium is water and thus hydrogels are defined as crosslinked polymeric porous networks that can absorb huge quantities of water into their interstitial pores (Hoffman, 2002). For fabrication of temperature-sensitive hydrogels, polymer materials have been processed into both three-dimensional macroscopic materials called as bulk hydrogels and microscopic materials called microgels and used for relevant applications. 

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