Abstract
In this work, the effect of two processes, i.e., freeze-drying and supercritical CO2 (SC-CO2) drying, on the final morphology of agarose-based porous structures, was investigated. The agarose concentration in water was varied from 1 wt% up to 8 wt%. Agarose cryogels were prepared by freeze-drying using two cooling rates: 2.5 °C/min and 0.1 °C/min. A more uniform macroporous structure and a decrease in average pore size were achieved when a fast cooling rate was adopted. When a slower cooling rate was performed instead, cryogels were characterized by a macroporous and heterogenous structure at all of the values of the biopolymer concentration investigated. SC-CO2 drying led to the production of aerogels characterized by a mesoporous structure, with a specific surface area up to 170 m2/g. Moreover, agarose-based aerogels were solvent-free, and no thermal changes were detected in the samples after processing.
Highlights
Morphology of Agarose‐Based Cryogels Obtained by a Fast‐Cooling Step
Morphology of Agarose-Based Cryogels Obtained by a Fast-Cooling Step
Thermograms of pure pureagarose, agarose,agarose‐based agarose-based cryogels and agarose-based aerogels areillustrated illustrated in Figure out to to verify if the different processes are Thisanalysis analysiswas wascarried carried out verify if the different processes influenced the thermal structures
Summary
Agarose, together with its derivatives and blends, is widely used in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine due to its pH-responsive properties, resemblance to the extracellular matrix, controllable permeation for nutrients, inert structure, thermo-reversible gelation behavior and poroelastic structure [5,6,7,8]. Agarose biomechanical properties can be modulated in a wide range of ways, depending on the kind of soft or hard tissue to substitute and by varying the polymer concentration [9,10]. Low concentrations of agarose are able to reproduce the dynamic porous media behavior of soft tissues (i.e., brain) with adequate water absorption and retention properties [11,12]. Fey et al [13] prepared different mineral foams consisting of agarose, alumina, hydroxyapatite and calcium phosphate that could be used for hard tissue applications
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