Hydrogels are broadly used in applications where polymer materials must interface with biology. Polyacrylamide (PAAm) is a hydrogel widely applied in DNA chromatography and cell culture. The pore sizes, and thus, bulk mechanical properties of PAAm can be controlled by adjusting the ratio of reactive material and the ratio of crosslinker to monomer. Nevertheless, the PAAm network is amorphous, with substantial pore heterogeneity on length scales up to hundreds of nanometers, potentially limiting the precision of control over surface functionalization. This raises challenges for applications that benefit from highly structured interactions with biomolecules (<i>e.g., </i>adsorption of polyelectrolytes and cell scaffolding). Recently, we have generated high-resolution surface patterns on polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS), a hydrophobic polymer created through macromonomer crosslinking. Here, we extend this capability to PAAm, a hydrophilic gel with a substantially different polymerization process involving radical-mediated polymerization of acrylate co-monomers. We demonstrate that when 1-nm wide linear patterns of amines are transferred to polyacrylamide, they modulate interactions with DNA, in a manner consistent with variations in PAAm gel structure.

Nanostructured surface functionalization of polyacrylamide hydrogels below the length scale of hydrogel heterogeneity</i>

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ACS Fall 2022

The official archive and repository for all ACS Meetings & Expositions abstracts and select posters or presentations.