Adhesion to wet and dynamic surfaces, including biological tissues, is important in many fields, but has proven extremely challenging. Existing adhesives are either cytotoxic, adhere weakly to tissues, or cannot be utilized in wet environments. We report a bio-inspired design for adhesives consisting of two layers: an adhesive surface and a dissipative matrix. The former adheres to the substrate by electrostatic interactions, covalent bonds, and physical interpenetration. The latter amplifies energy dissipation through hysteresis. The two layers synergistically lead to higher adhesion energy on wet surfaces than existing adhesives. Adhesion occurs within minutes, independent of blood exposure, and compatible with in vivo dynamic movements. This family of adhesives may be useful in many areas of application, including tissue adhesives, wound dressings and tissue repair.

Inspired by embryonic wound closure, we present mechanically active dressings to accelerate wound healing. Conventional dressings passively aid healing by maintaining moisture at wound sites. Recent developments have focused on drug and cell delivery to drive a healing process, but these methods are often complicated by drug side effects, sophisticated fabrication, and high cost. Here, we present novel active adhesive dressings consisting of thermoresponsive tough adhesive hydrogels that combine high stretchability, toughness, tissue adhesion, and antimicrobial function. They adhere strongly to the skin and actively contract wounds, in response to exposure to the skin temperature. In vitro and in vivo studies demonstrate their efficacy in accelerating and supporting skin wound healing. Finite element models validate and refine the wound contraction process enabled by these active adhesive dressings. This mechanobiological approach opens new avenues for wound management and may find broad utility in applications ranging from regenerative medicine to soft robotics.

ABSTRACT:In the present article, chitin from crab shell was systematically deacetylated using a NaOH treatment with control of the reaction time. The degree of deacetylation, monitored using solid-state NMR, revealed that the reaction was pseudo-first order. Based on this, swollen and NaOH-saturated particles are proposed as the reaction system. The weight loss of the partially saponified and neutralized samples after HCl hydrolysis increased linearly with the degree of deacetylation. The crystallinity of the samples was found to increase after acid hydrolysis. According to conductimetric titration, the surface charge density of the crystallites, after acid hydrolysis, was found to increase with base treatment time. The effect of surface charge on the formation of a chiral nematic phase, due to the rodlike nature of the crystallites, was explored. These results show that because the contribution of charged particles to the ionic strength was significant the double layer compression was affected, especially since the surface charge density was close to the Manning limit.