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. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2012 Apr 1.
Published in final edited form as: Curr Opin Colloid Interface Sci. 2011 Apr 1;16(2):106–117. doi: 10.1016/j.cocis.2011.01.005

Figure 3.

Figure 3

Applications of complex colloidal hydrogels from lithographic synthesis. (a) Examples of colloidal assembly. Left: amphiphilic self-assembly of colloidal “surfactants” and shape-specific assembly of lock-and-key colloids, reproduced with permission from [30] and [97], repsectively. Right: electric field-induced assembly of colloidal bars into mixtures of lateral and transverse chains (left) and colloidal “boomerangs” into densely packed structures, reproduced with permission from [94]. (b) Example of a micromechanical device, reproduced with permission from [72]. Left: operation of an in situ hydrogel flow sensor in a fluid microchannel. Right: Demonstration of a railed microfluidic transporter [40]. (c) Examples of encapsulation and delivery. Left: encapsulation and viability of NIH 3T3 fibroblasts in PEG-gelatin hydrogel cubes, reproduced with permission from [98]. Center: cellular uptake of hydrogel microparticles by HeLa cells, reproduced with permission from [99]. Right: Biodistribution imaging of the same particles in healthy mouse model after bolus tail injection, reproduced with permission from [100]. (d) Workflow diagram for high-throughput, multiplexed bioassays utilizing graphically-encoded hydrogel colloids, reproduced with permission from [31].