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G. Keerthiga et al.
Fig. 7 Nanocomposite hydrogels for biomedical applications
4.1 Microfabrication Techniques for Hydrogel Formulation
In the last two decades, microfabrication approaches using polymeric materials to
make hybrid materials are in research focus, to overcome the complexities in tissue
engineering applications. Many such advanced techniques have been reported to
locate different types of cells within the hydrogel and aid for active tissue formation. Fibrillar structures are necessary for intrinsic influence on cell morphology,
differentiation, and polarity. Hydrogel offers fibrils of a wide range of diameters that
can be prepared by various methods. Self-organization of the peptides with other
hydrophilic and hydrophobic groups [173, 125], electrospinning method can provide
fibers of nano to micrometer diameter with direct orientation and spacing [150–155],
microfluidic co-flow of polymer and gelation solution in patterned devices are some
of the techniques reported. Microfluidic devices are fabricated by well-established