The Fabrication And Characterization Of Tough And Self-Healing Hydrogel

Hydrogels have been widely used in the fields of bioengineering and tissue engineering due to their excellent biocompatibility.Among these hydrogels,tough hydrogels have attracted more attention by researchers because of their excellent mechanical properties.Meanwhile,considering the self-healing ability to prolong the lifespan when hydrogels are damage,self-healing hydrogels also have a broad application prospect.In this article,we have prepared highly stretchable and self-healable hydrogels and dual physical crosslinked tough hydrogels.The research contents of this paper are as follows.?1?We develop a highly stretchable and self-healing hydrogel via in-situ free radical copolymerization of a function monomer,N-acryloyl-6-aminocaproic acid?AACA?,and Pluronic F127 diacrylate?F127DA?.In this system,F127DA can self-assemble to form polymeric micelles,and thus severing as multifunctional macro-cross-linkers evenly distributed in aqueous solution.Due to the homogenous network and effective energy dissipation mechanism,the hydrogels show highly stretchablity and puncture resistance.Meanwhile,the flexible polymer chains endow hydrogels with the self-healing ability.When polymer chains of hydrogels are protonated,those chains cross the fracture surface to form abundant and multiple hydrogen bonding between the carboxyl groups of the other side chains and repair damaged hydrogels.What's more,the hydrogels show pH-responsive cyclic swelling-deswelling behavior because of the pH sensitivity of AACA.?2?We prepare dual physical crosslinked hydrogels with ultrahigh mechanical Strength,toughness,and good Self-Recovery at room temperature via the multifunctional macro-crosslink of F127DA micelles and Fe³⁺-COO-coordination interactions.The F127DA macro-cross-linkers maintain the network structure of the hydrogel.And the tridentate Fe³⁺-COO-dynamic complexes can dissipate a large amount of energy when the external loading was applied,so that the hydrogel has excellent mechanical properties and self-recovery performance.Meanwhile,the hydrogel can also be endowed with pH-responsive and redox-responsive shape memory effects.