Dependency of hydrogel membrane pores on membrane pressure and concentration: Numerical and experimental investigations

Research output: Contribution to journalResearch articleContributedpeer-review

Contributors

Abstract

Control of pore opening is a valuable contribution to ensure filtration and separation of particles and cells of different sizes. These can be, e.g. blood cells with their cell distribution width, which is typically measured in the Complete Blood Count. In the current work, we investigate hydrogel pores made of pNIPAAm with swelling and de-swelling capabilities. They react to variations in ethanol concentration. Additionally, we analyze the effect of microfluidic pressure on membrane pores. Furthermore, the influence of the gel volume for cross-shaped pores is shown. For this purpose, experimental and numerical investigations are performed. An analogy model for the swelling behavior based on the Temperature-Expansion-Model from our previous work and a neo-Hookean material description is applied to describe swelling and mechanical deformation of the pores. Simulation results show a negligible influence to the pore bending in the specified pressure range. In the experiments, only a slight change in the pore area is observed under pressure variation. Nonetheless, there is a very good agreement between numerical and experimental results. The current investigations show the potential for the mechanical description of hydrogel pores for their further geometric optimization.

Details

Original languageEnglish
JournalMechanics of Advanced Materials and Structures
Publication statusPublished - 1 Dec 2022
Peer-reviewedYes

External IDs

ORCID /0000-0002-2370-8381/work/141545329
ORCID /0000-0002-8588-9755/work/142246729

Keywords

Keywords

  • Ethanol-sensitive hydrogels, experiments, hydrogel synthesis and characterization, microfluidics, numerical simulations, tunable micro pore filter