Higher glass transition temperatures reduce thermal stress in cryopreservation
A new study demonstrates that higher glass transition temperatures in vitrification solutions reduce thermal stress and cracking during cryopreservation, using a custom cryomacroscope and deep learning to analyze cracking in aqueous solutions. The researchers found an inverse relationship between glass transition temperature and thermal expansion, leading to lower stress in solutions with higher Tg. Finite element simulations support these findings, suggesting current cryoprotectant solutions may be suboptimal for large-scale applications. The results point to new strategies for designing vitrification solutions that minimize fracture risk in organ and tissue preservation.
- ▪Solutions with higher glass transition temperatures (Tg) exhibit less thermal stress and cracking during vitrification due to reduced thermal expansion.
- ▪The study used four binary aqueous solutions—DMSO, glycerol, xylitol, and sucrose—with Tg values ranging over 50 °C.
- ▪Deep learning-based image segmentation was applied to quantify cracking in vitrified samples imaged via a custom cryomacroscope platform.
- ▪Thermomechanical simulations confirmed that higher Tg solutions develop lower thermal stresses under identical cooling and warming conditions.
- ▪Commonly used cryoprotectants like DMSO have low Tg values, potentially making them more prone to inducing thermal cracking in large biological systems.
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Download PDF Article Open access Published: 31 July 2025 Higher glass transition temperatures reduce thermal stress cracking in aqueous solutions relevant to cryopreservation Soheil Kavian1, Ronald Sellers1, Gabriel Arismendi Sanchez1, Crysthal Alvarez1, Guillermo Aguilar1 & …Matthew J. Powell-Palm1,2,3 Show authors Scientific Reports volume 15, Article number: 27903 (2025) Cite this article 7486 Accesses 3 Citations 80 Altmetric Metrics details Subjects Mechanical engineeringPhase transitions and critical phenomenaThermodynamics AbstractCryopreservation by vitrification could transform fields ranging from organ transplantation to wildlife conservation, but critical physical challenges remain in scaling this approach from microscopic to macroscopic systems, including the threat of fracture due to accumulated thermal stresses. Here, we provide experimental and computational evidence that these stresses are strongly dependent on the glass transition temperature \(\:{T}_{g}\) of the vitrification solution, a property which, given the narrow band of chemistries represented within common vitrification solutions, is seldom investigated in thermomechanical analyses. We develop a custom cryomacroscope platform to image glass cracking in four aqueous solution chemistries spanning > 50 °C in \(\:{T}_{g}\); we process these images using semantic segmentation deep learning algorithms to analyze the extent of cracking in each; and we perform thermomechanical finite element simulations to disentangle the multiphysics effects driving the observed dependency, providing new insights to inform design of next-generation vitrification solutions that minimize thermal cracking risks. Similar content being viewed by others Ice thickness monitoring for cryo-EM grids by interferometry imaging Article Open access 12 September 2022 Thermophysical properties and solidification behavior of liquid Vit106a in microgravity Article Open access 17 February 2026 Automated vitrification of cryo-EM samples with controllable sample thickness using suction and real-time optical inspection Article Open access 27 May 2022 window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; window.dataLayer.push({ recommendations: { recommender: 'semantic', model: 'e5', policy_id: null, timestamp: 1777389372, embedded_user: 'null' } }); IntroductionCryopreservation by vitrification, or the stabilization of biological matter in the glassy state at low-temperature, promises to realize broad transformations of the global bio-cold chain, enabling the banking of transplantable organs and tissues1,2, conservation of threatened flora and fauna3,4, stabilization of volatile pharmaceuticals5,6, etc. However, while the first successful vitrification and transplantation of a mammalian organ was recently achieved at the rodent scale2, significant physical challenges remain in the translation of vitrification approaches to increasingly large-volume biological systems.These challenges have varied origins in the complex multiphysics of vitrification— loading of chemically diverse vitrification solutions into biological tissues presents a unique and complicated mass transfer problem; reducing the critical cooling and warming rates required to avoid deleterious ice formation en route to the desired storage temperature requires manipulation of nucleation kinetics and growth phenomena; and the achievability of these cooling and warming rates is limited by the thermal transport properties of the sample7,8. One physical…
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