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

来自天然聚合物的生物基产品可以在环境中完全降解，作为传统合成聚合物的可持续但功能性的替代品或添加剂，吸引了巨大的兴趣。 水凝胶，水溶胀聚合物网络，是生物基产品的理想目标材料，因为许多生物聚合物是水溶性的，并且水凝胶的许多最终应用（即生物医学和环境）需要有效和安全的降解才能发挥适当的功能。 在水凝胶的背景下，淀粉是一种特别有吸引力的生物基结构单元，考虑到它是无毒的，生物相容的，可生物降解的，和便宜的。 然而，天然淀粉含有结晶结构域，使其难以化学改性，从而导致化学非均质聚合物，使明确定义的功能性水凝胶的设计具有挑战性。 我们的合作伙伴EcoSynthetix通过创造定义明确的生物聚合物纳米颗粒来应对这一挑战，这些纳米颗粒易于修改并以商业规模生产。 我们建议将这些生物聚合物纳米颗粒作为构建块，用于制造具有各种独特内部结构的功能性水凝胶，使用纳米颗粒作为填料以降低昂贵的功能性水凝胶或（生物聚合物的酶促降解后）模板的成本，用于生成定义明确的孔网络。 一个特别的重点将放在开发“智能”，环境响应性水凝胶含有重要的生物聚合物成分，从而降低成本，同时保持这些材料的功能。 靶向水凝胶组合物将被应用于开发用于药物递送、组织工程、农业、环境修复和工业催化的新材料，特别是在每种应用中利用生物聚合物纳米颗粒的独特性质。 成功完成拟议的研究将产生新的，可持续的和功能性的水凝胶材料，有可能改善医疗保健，工业制造和环境，为加拿大提供显着的经济和社会效益。

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.