Skip to main content
. Author manuscript; available in PMC: 2021 Jul 1.
Published in final edited form as: Ann Biomed Eng. 2020 Feb 4;48(7):2053–2063. doi: 10.1007/s10439-020-02460-w

FIGURE 2.

FIGURE 2

Viscoelastic properties of thioester crosslinked hydrogels depend on the concentration of unreacted thiols in the network. (a) Gel stoichiometry was tuned to ensure unreacted thiol species remained after network formation. These thiols then facilitated the exchange of crosslinks via the thioester exchange reaction. (b) In-situ shear elastic modulus of thioester hydrogels with a stoichiometric thiol excess ranging from 0–200%. (c) In-situ stress relaxation properties of thioester gels with a stoichiometric thiol excess ranging from 0–200%. Each profile is an average of n=3 replicates. (d) Average stress relaxation profiles (2c) were fitted to a stretched exponential equation (1) <τ> was calculated using equation (2) and the fitted parameters τk and β. (e) Final fraction of stress remaining after 5400s of relaxation. Reported error bars are the standard deviation, (***) indicates p < 0.001, (****) indicates p<0.0001, n=3.