The hydration dynamics of polyelectrolyte gels with applications to cell motility and drug delivery.

We combine the physics of gels with the hydrodynamics of two-phase fluids to construct a set of equations that describe the hydration dynamics of polyelectrolyte gels. We use the model to address three problems. First, we express the effective diffusion constants for neutral and charged spherically distributed gels in terms of microscopic parameters. Second, we use the model to describe the locomotion of nematode sperm cells. Finally, we describe the swelling dynamics of polyelectrolyte gels used for drug release.