3D printable hydrogel filament with functionalizable moiety for in-situ flow-based sensor

Understanding microorganisms is a worthy work to gather various biological information that can directly affect human beings. However, most information is detected or measured at ex-situ conditions. In this work, we attempted to fabricate a 3D printable hydrogel-based in-situ detection system. We designed the hydrogel containing azide functionalized polyethylenglycole methacrylate (PEGMA) and fabricated the hydrogel as a 3D structure to prepare flow type detector using a 3D printer. To use hydrogel as a 3D printer filament, we enhanced viscosity via the pre-crosslinking process and added bentonite with Polyethylene glycol diacrylate (PEGDA) crosslinker with a certain proportion. Prepared hydrogel 3D structure could cultivate E.coli in a liquid culture medium. The hydrogel 3D structure has an azide group which is a useful tool to introduce additional chemical functionality via azide–alkyne click reaction. Using this process, we introduced alkyne functionalized 4-(2-pyridylazo) resorcinol (PAR). The PAR clicked hydrogel can be used as flow based sensor platform to detect i.e. various metal ions including Cu, Al, and Co ions in media.