Preparation And Application Of Sodium Alginate Gel Tubes

Hydrogel tube was a tubular material with three-dimensional network structure containing a lot of water.It was widely used in various fields because of its large specific surface area and transportability.At present,the main preparation methods of gel tubes included mold manufacturing,electrostatic spinning,coaxial extrusion,3D printing,self-crimping,phase separation,gas foaming,etc.,and these preparation methods generally required a certain template or needed to be carried out under specific chemical conditions,so it was still a big challenge to develop a simple,controllable and continuous gel tube preparation method.Sodium alginate and calcium ions gelled quickly when they come into contact.If the calcium ion solution was continuously pushed into the sodium alginate solution,the two components quickly crosslinked at the contact surface to form a gel film,preventing the axial transport of calcium ions,so that the calcium ion solution could only spread laterally,forming an irregular gel wall.And the stem of the plant,with auxin,could constantly grow at the tip.Therefore,a simple continuous and personalized design method was proposed for the preparation of sodium alginate hydrogel tubes by combining the idea of plant tip growth with sodium alginate,which was easy to cross link.Specific work was as follows:(1)The study found that traction had diversity.As long as there was no reaction,no miscible with raw materials,and no precipitation,such as bubbles,pentane,hexal and other substances could be used as traction materials for the preparation of gel tubes.These traction materials could not only control the direction of movement by the density difference between them and the substrate,but also doping magnetic particles in the traction materials to control the direction of the formation of gel tubes through magnetic drive.(2)The gel tube was controllable and customizable.By adjusting the preparation conditions,the gel tubes of different sizes could be obtained to meet the application of different conditions.The hollow gel tube with complex structure could be prepared without mold,which was expected to be used in tissue scaffolds.(3)Sodium alginate gel tube had certain conductivity and non-swelling property,and it had been successfully applied in underwater sensing for detecting different underwater depths and different bending states.When glycerol was introduced as a water retention factor,the organic gel tube with water retention and antifreeze was prepared.The application field of the gel tube bending sensor was expanded to the low temperature and low humidity environment,and it had excellent water retention performance.