Project description
Decoding the complex structure and dynamics of carbohydrate hydrogels
Gels are semi-solid colloidal systems whose properties range from soft to tough. Carbohydrate-based hydrogels can find use in a wide range of applications, from tissue implants to water decontamination, owing to their biocompatibility and biodegradability. However, high production costs and unsustainable manufacturing limit their development. Further, their characterisation at the molecular and macroscopic scales is challenging due to their structural and dynamics complexity. Funded by the Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions programme, the Sweet2Gel project will develop novel methods based on a combination of nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy, molecular modelling and deep learning for the detailed characterisation of carbohydrate-based hydrogels at the molecular level, and to generate predictive models that allow to decipher hidden relationships between the molecular and macroscopic properties.
Objective
Gels are 3D entangled polymer or particle networks that present, simultaneously, solid and liquid-like properties. Gels are widely present in daily life products such as contact lenses, food thickeners, platforms for drug delivery, or wound healing ointments, among others. Carbohydrate-based hydrogels have gathered increasing attention for a wide range of biomedical and industrial applications (e.g. tissue engineering or water decontamination) due to their biocompatible, biodegradable and non-immunogenic features. However, the development of most gel-like materials is currently limited due their high production costs and greatly pollutant manufacturing techniques. In addition, the great structural complexity of gels, where different lengths scales and isotropic and anisotropic phases coexist, limit their characterisation at the molecular and macroscopic scales, thus hindering the design and development of functional gels with tailored properties. High Resolution Magic Angle Spinning (HR-MAS) and solid-state NMR (SSNMR) spectroscopy constitute the most powerful technologies to characterise the structure and dynamics of hydrogels at the molecular level, not accessible by other techniques. The specific objectives of the Sweet2Gel project are (i) to develop novel HR-MAS and SSNMR protocols for the characterisation of carbohydrate-based gels, (ii) to develop predictive deep-learning-based models that allow to decipher hidden relationships between the molecular and macroscopic properties of the gels and (iii) to improve the molecular models of carbohydrate gel particles by a combination of molecular dynamics and deep learning approaches. Hence, the Sweet2Gel Project aims to accelerate the development of a new generation of renewable materials with rationally designed properties for a wide range of applications.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
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Keywords
Programme(s)
- HORIZON.1.2 - Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions (MSCA) Main Programme
Funding Scheme
HORIZON-TMA-MSCA-PF-EF - HORIZON TMA MSCA Postdoctoral Fellowships - European FellowshipsCoordinator
28006 Madrid
Spain