1.Smart Hydrogel-based Wound Dressing could be the Band-Aid of the Future:
MIT engineers have designed a smart band-aid: a sticky, stretchy, gel-like material that can incorporate temperature sensors, LED lights, and other electronics, as well as tiny, drug-delivering reservoirs and channels. The “smart wound dressing” releases medicine in response to changes in skin temperature and can be designed to light up if the medicine is running low.
The researchers embedded various electronic components within a sheet of hydrogel to create a “smart wound dressing,” comprising regularly spaced temperature sensors and tiny drug reservoirs. The researchers also created pathways for drugs to flow through the hydrogel, by either inserting patterned tubes or drilling tiny holes through the matrix. They placed the dressing over various regions of the body and found that even when highly stretched the dressing continued to monitor skin temperature and release drugs according to the sensor readings.
2.3D-Printed Smart Gel Walks Underwater and Moves Objects:
Rutgers University–New Brunswick engineers have created a 3D-printed smart gel that walks underwater and grabs objects and moves them. The watery creation could lead to soft robots that mimic sea animals like the octopus, which can walk underwater and bump into things without damaging them. It may also lead to artificial heart, stomach and other muscles, along with devices for diagnosing diseases, detecting and delivering drugs and performing underwater inspections.
3.Cell-infused Gloves and Bandages light up when in contact with certain Chemicals:
Engineers and biologists at MIT have teamed up to design a new “living material” a tough, stretchy, biocompatible sheet of hydrogel injected with live cells that are genetically programmed to light up in the presence of certain chemicals. The team fabricated various wearable sensors from the cell-infused hydrogel, including a rubber glove with fingertips that glow after touching a chemically contaminated surface, and bandages that light up when pressed against chemicals on a person’s skin.
4.MIT’s new drug-delivering nanogel can be injected instead of requiring surgery:
MIT chemical engineers have designed a new type of self-healing hydrogel that could be injected through a syringe. Such gels can carry one or two drugs at a time. They are useful for treating cancer or heart disease. This nanogel can change shape when applying stress to it, and it can re-heal when relaxing those forces. This property of this new nanogel allows the use of syringe or needle to inject them into the body without surgery.
5.Transparent Hydrogel Robots can catch and release live Fish:
Engineers at MIT have fabricated transparent, gel-based robots that move when water is pumped in and out of them. The bots can perform a number of fast, forceful tasks, including kicking a ball underwater, and grabbing and releasing a live fish.
The robots are made entirely of hydrogel — a tough, rubbery, nearly transparent material that’s composed mostly of water. Each robot is an assemblage of hollow, precisely designed hydrogel structures, connected to rubbery tubes. When the researchers pump water into the hydrogel robots, the structures quickly inflate in orientations that enable the bots to curl up or stretch out. The research team is currently looking to adapt hydrogel robots for medical applications.
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