backbone to hydrogel materials made from alginate tagged posts

Brown University researchers have created a hybrid material out of seaweed-derived alginate and the nanomaterial graphene oxide. The 3-D printing technique used to make the material enables the creation of intricate structures, including the one above, which mimics that atomic lattice a graphene.
Credit: Wong Lab / Brow University

Brown University researchers have shown a way to use graphene oxide (GO) to add some backbone to hydrogel materials made from alginate, a natural material derived from seaweed that’s currently used in a variety of biomedical applications. In a paper published in the journal Carbon, the researchers describe a 3D printing method for making intricate and durable alginate-GO structures that are far stiffer and more fracture resistant that alginate alone.

“One limiting...