Chemical Valves Based on Vegetal Xylems Modified with pH-dependent Hydrogels

ROMERO, MARCELO R.; GÓMEZ, CÉSAR; WOLFEL, ALEXIS; TREJO NIEVA, GISELLA

Córdoba

Congreso; II Brazil-Argentine Microfluidics Congress; 2019

Microfluídica Argentina y Facultad de Matemática, Astronomía, Física y Computación Universidad Nacional de Córdoba

The actuator field is in constant growth since it involves the creation of new composite11 materials, as well as the application of deep interdisciplinary expertise. In particular, the12 development of macroscopic non-electrical chemical actuators that change their state in a13 few seconds remains as a scientific challenge hitherto restricted to micrometer devices. On14 the other hand, the construction of multiple micrometric actuator devices to commutate15 simultaneously is a very laborious and expensive challenge. In this work, a singular alter-16 native is proposed. A chemical actuator valve was developed using a vegetable stem as17 micro-structured support. To do this,chemical modifications were made in the stem xylems18 of a Pumpkin(Cucurbita moschata) used as an array of parallel capillaries.Subsequently, a19 pH-sensitive hydrogel based on acrylic acid was synthesized within these channels and the20 chemical properties and response of the actuator system developed under different exper-21 imental conditions were studied. The actuator showed pH-responsive properties and fast22 response time. We expect that the proposed alternative could begin a research area of hy-23 brid actuators based on biological scaffolds combined with tailor-made synthetic polymers