Fluorescent gels: a review of synthesis, properties, applications and challenges

Abstract

Soft material gels are important biomaterials for tissue engineering and biomedicine. Fluorescent gels possess the additional property of being light emitting, with advanced applications in sensing, bioimaging, and electrofluorochromic devices.

Tuning Surface Morphology of Fluorescent Hydrogels Using a Vortex Fluidic Device

“…Fluorescent hydrogels, compared to those with a conventional gel structure, can emit light. This feature makes them attractive for advanced applications in regenerative medicine, cell imaging, biochemical sensing, and biomaterials [72][73][74][75]. Conventional routes to fabricate fluorescent hydrogels include physical mixing of a gel with fluorescent dyes before the crosslinking and soaking of a crosslinked hydrogel in a dye solution.…”

Supramolecular hydrogels prepared from fluorescent alkyl pyridinium acrylamide monomers and CB[8]

“…Side-chain functionalised polymers bearing fluorescent moieties, fluorescent gels and, specifically, fluorescent supramolecular hydrogels make up a wide field of interest across chemistry, biology and physics, with potential applications in energy conversion, biolabeling, tissue engineering and sensors. [27][28][29] In most polymer-based preparations of fluorescent hydrogels three components are required: a backbone polymer, a dye and a gelator/crosslinker. By selecting pyridine moieties with known fluorescence properties for a generic monomer synthesis, we envisioned that we could reduce the number of components required for hydrogel formation as the crosslink-forming moiety and fluorescent dye could be combined as illustrated in Fig.…”

Programming properties of transient hydrogels by an enzymatic reaction

“…Supramolecular gels are formed when monomeric building blocks self-assemble into long fibrous structures that entrap solvent molecules. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7] Generally, man-made selfassembly is an energetically down-hill process and so selfassembled gels can be formed under thermodynamic equilibrium. [8][9][10][11] However, depending on the preparative pathway, self-assembled gels may exist as kinetically trapped structures where the assembly structures reside in the local thermodynamic minimum in the free energy landscape.…”