Rheology Facility for Materials Characterization and Tissue Engineering

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The current proposal is for the acquisition of a versatile rheometer used for the characterization of the viscoelastic properties of materials and the monitoring of the integrity of materials during cell growth. The research programs span biomaterial-based tissue engineering (Akbari, Willerth), hard polymers (Wulff), soft self-assembled polymers (Moffitt), bioanalytics (Brolo) and supramolecular gels (Bohne). The proposed rheometer will be used with materials with very different elasticities. This equipment will be used to study the properties of tough organic polymers used in the automotive industry where the Wulff group was able to synthesize a functionalized version of an industrially important polymer material that overcame serious shortcomings of previous materials. At the other extreme of uses, the Akbari group will study the growth of cells in hydrogels while the cells are growing on the material in order to evaluate how degradation of the developed biomaterials can be minimized. Willerth will investigate biomaterial scaffolds that are combined with pluripotent stem cells. Brolo’s group is developing new hydrogels with embedded nanoparticles for real-time monitoring of surface contaminants in the natural environment. The rheometer will be used by the Moffitt group to optimize the photonic properties of self-assembled polymeric materials being developed. Bohne’s lab will investigate how small molecules move within hydrogels with the aim of understanding how this mobility can be used to time the release of small molecules from hydrogels; a process of importance in drug delivery.