Progress in the investigation of soft-matter gels is discussed, and cutting-edge applications of BioMatter are demonstrated. Emphasis is placed on a series of high-performance hydrogels consisting of tetra-arm poly(ethylene glycol), called “Tetra-PEG gels”. Tetra-PEG gels are now well known for their extraordinarily uniform and monodisperse network structures, compared with those of conventional gels, and can be tuned depending on the given molecular weight, concentration, choice of pair prepolymers, hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity, thermosensitivity, composition, etc. The unique characteristics of Tetra-PEG gels are reviewed, and a variety of applications are demonstrated. Problems in their biomedical application are then raised, followed by a discussion of attempts to circumvent these issues.

中文翻译：

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凝胶：从软物质到生物物质

讨论了软物质凝胶研究的进展，并展示了BioMatter的前沿应用。重点放在一系列由四臂聚乙二醇组成的高性能水凝胶上，称为“ Tetra-PEG凝胶”。与传统凝胶相比，Tetra-PEG凝胶现在以其异常均匀和单分散的网络结构而闻名，可以根据给定的分子量，浓度，成对预聚物的选择，亲水性/疏水性，热敏性，组成，综述了Tetra-PEG凝胶的独特特性，并展示了其多种应用。然后提出了在其生物医学应用中的问题，然后讨论了如何规避这些问题的讨论。