Design and Fabrication of Nanostructured "Smart" Hydrogels from Biopolymer Nanoparticle Building Blocks

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Bio-based products from natural polymers that can be fully degraded in the environment are attracting tremendous interest as sustainable yet functional replacements or additives for conventional synthetic polymers. Hydrogels, water-swollen polymer networks, are ideal target materials for bio-based products given that many biological polymers are water-soluble and many of the ultimate applications of hydrogels (i.e. biomedical and environmental) require effective and safe degradation for proper function. In the context of hydrogels, starch is a particularly attractive bio-based building block considering that it is non-toxic, biocompatible, biodegradable, and inexpensive. However, native starch contains crystalline domains that make it hard to chemically modify, leading to chemically heterogeneous polymers that make the design of well-defined functional hydrogels challenging. Our partner, EcoSynthetix, has addressed this challenge by creating well-defined biopolymer nanoparticles that are easily modifiable and produced on a commercial scale. We propose applying these biopolymer nanoparticles as building blocks for the fabrication of functional hydrogels with a variety of unique internal structures, using the nanoparticles as both fillers to reduce the cost of expensive functional hydrogels or (following enzymatic degradation of the biopolymer) templates for the generation of well-defined pore networks. A particular emphasis will be placed on developing "smart", environmentally-responsive hydrogels containing a significant biopolymer component, thus reducing the cost while preserving the functionality of such materials. Targeted hydrogel compositions will be applied to develop new materials for drug delivery, tissue engineering, agriculture, environmental remediation, and industrial catalysis, specifically exploiting the unique properties of the biopolymer nanoparticles in each application. Successful completion of the proposed research will result in new, sustainable, and functional hydrogel materials with potential to improve healthcare, industrial manufacturing, and the environment, offering significant economic and societal benefits to Canada.