Emulsion-templated poly(acrylamide)s by using polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) stabilized CO2-in-water emulsions and their applications in tissue engineering scaffolds

The key challenge in the formation of stable CO2-in-water (C/W) emulsions has always been the availability of effective surfactants. Most of the surfactants being used for this purpose are expensive and difficult to synthesize, rendering the formation of C/W emulsions an uneconomical and unfavorable process. In this work, we report the use of commercial polyvinyl alcohol as an effective stabilizer for the formation of C/W emulsions at low temperatures. Porous emulsion-templated materials were prepared by the polymerization of the continuous phase of C/W emulsions. The open-cell morphology of the emulsion-templated materials was observed by scanning electron microscopy. To tune the morphology of the porous structures, the influence of the stabilizer concentration and the process of polymerization were investigated. These porous PAM materials were further evaluated for cellular growth and proliferation to demonstrate their applications in tissue engineering.