Hydrogel Nanoarchitectonics: An Evolving Paradigm for Ultrasensitive Biosensing

Abstract

The integration of nanoarchitectonics and hydrogel into conventional biosensing platforms offers the opportunities to design physically and chemically controlled and optimized soft structures with superior biocompatibility, better immobilization of biomolecules, and specific and sensitive biosensor design. The physical and chemical properties of 3D hydrogel structures can be modified by integrating with nanostructures. Such modifications can enhance their responsiveness to mechanical, optical, thermal, magnetic, and electric stimuli, which in turn can enhance the practicality of biosensors in clinical settings. This review describes the synthesis and kinetics of gel networks and exploitation of nanostructure‐integrated hydrogels in biosensing. With an emphasis on different integration strategies of hydrogel with nanostructures, this review highlights the importance of hydrogel nanostructures as one of the most favorable candidates for developing ultrasensitive biosensors. Moreover, hydrogel nanoarchitectonics are also portrayed as a promising candidate for fabricating next‐generation robust biosensors.

The marriage of Xenes and hydrogels: Fundamentals, applications, and outlook

“…The well-sized holes and attachable groups in hydrogels can keep additives at a specific distance to maintain the structural and functional stability of hybrid hydrogels, thus reducing Xene aggregation and displaying steady and continuous function. 67 …”

Nanomaterial-based biohybrid hydrogel in bioelectronics

“…Owing to their superior properties including flexibility and high swelling ability, hydrogels have been applied in various research fields including microfluidics and soft robotics. In particular, compared with polymers, hydrogels exhibit high biocompatibility due to their properties including high moisture content, biodegradability, and porous structure, so they can be used for developing biosensors, drug delivery systems, engineered tissue, and other biological applications [ 7 , 8 ]. Particularly, the hydrogels have shown tremendous potential for the development of bioelectronic devices due to their biological and electrical properties [ 9 – 11 ].…”

Cellulose‐based Conductive Gels and Their Applications

“…This is one of the representative materials of nanoarchitectonics. [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9][10] It can be classified into subgroups according to the liquids trapped in the gels. [11,12] Generally, gels include hydrogels swollen with water, [13] organogels swollen with organic solvents, [14,15] ionogels swollen with an ionic liquid (IL), [16,17] and aerogels formed by removing the liquid from liquid phase gels.…”

“…A gel is defined as a crosslinked polymer network and a complex product of several different components. This is one of the representative materials of nanoarchitectonics [1–10] . It can be classified into subgroups according to the liquids trapped in the gels [11,12] .…”