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Layered Alginate Constructs: A Platform for Co-culture of Heterogeneous Cell Populations
Published on: August 7, 2016
Strategic Shuffling of Clay Layers to Imbue Them with Responsiveness
Raj Kumar Gogoi1, Kalyan Raidongia1
1Department of Chemistry, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, Guwahati, 781039, Assam, India.
Abstract:
Layers of naturally occurring clay minerals are rearranged to prepare highly sensitive multiresponsive clay-clay bilayer membrane (CCBM). The CCBM introduced here responds to the minuscule changes in the surrounding environments including temperature, humidity, and presence of solvent vapors by morphing in specific manners. Strips cut from CCBM exhibit up to 588 N kg-1 force output when exposed to temperature fluctuations. Inheriting the natural stability of clay minerals, CCBM demonstrates extreme robustness, heating up to 500 °C, cooling with liquid N2 and exposure to corrosive chemical vapors did not deteriorate its bending performance. Mechanistic studies suggest that shape transformations of CCBM are driven by the unequal response of its components to external stimuli.
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