Rheological behavior of Pluronic/Pluronic diacrylate hydrogels used for bacteria encapsulation in engineered living materials

Shardul Bhusari; Maxi Hoffmann; Petra Herbeck-Engel; Shrikrishnan Sankaran; Manfred Wilhelm; Aránzazu del Campo

doi:10.1039/D3SM01119D

Rheological behavior of Pluronic/Pluronic diacrylate hydrogels used for bacteria encapsulation in engineered living materials†

Shardul Bhusari,^ab Maxi Hoffmann,^c Petra Herbeck-Engel,^a Shrikrishnan Sankaran,

^a Manfred Wilhelm^c and Aránzazu del Campo

*^ab

Author affiliations

* Corresponding authors

^a INM-Leibniz Institute for New Materials, Campus D2 2, 66123 Saarbrücken, Germany
E-mail: aranzazu.delcampo@leibniz-inm.de

^b Chemistry Department, Saarland University, 66123 Saarbrücken, Germany

^c Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Institute for Chemical Technology and Polymer Chemistry (ITCP), Engesserstraße 18, 76131 Karlsruhe, Germany

Abstract

Pluronic (Plu) hydrogels mixed with variable fractions of Pluronic diacrylate (PluDA) have become popular matrices to encapsulate bacteria and control their growth in engineered living materials. Here we study the rheological response of 30 wt% Plu/PluDA hydrogels with PluDA fraction between 0 and 1. We quantify the range of viscoelastic properties that can be covered in this system by varying in the PluDA fraction. We present stress relaxation and creep-recovery experiments and describe the variation of the critical yield strain/stress, relaxation and recovery parameters of Plu/PluDA hydrogels as function of the covalent crosslinking degree using the Burgers and Weilbull models. The analyzed hydrogels present two stress relaxations with different timescales which can be tuned with the covalent crosslinking degree. We expect this study to help users of Plu/PluDA hydrogels to estimate the mechanical properties of their systems, and to correlate them with the behaviour of bacteria in future Plu/PluDA devices of similar composition.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1039/D3SM01119D
Article type: Paper
Submitted: 24 Aug 2023
Accepted: 06 Dec 2023
First published: 18 Dec 2023
This article is Open Access

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Soft Matter, 2024,20, 1320-1332

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Rheological behavior of Pluronic/Pluronic diacrylate hydrogels used for bacteria encapsulation in engineered living materials

S. Bhusari, M. Hoffmann, P. Herbeck-Engel, S. Sankaran, M. Wilhelm and A. del Campo, Soft Matter, 2024, 20, 1320 DOI: 10.1039/D3SM01119D

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported Licence. You can use material from this article in other publications without requesting further permissions from the RSC, provided that the correct acknowledgement is given.

Soft Matter

Rheological behavior of Pluronic/Pluronic diacrylate hydrogels used for bacteria encapsulation in engineered living materials†

Abstract

Supplementary files

Article information

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Rheological behavior of Pluronic/Pluronic diacrylate hydrogels used for bacteria encapsulation in engineered living materials

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