Specialty Tough Hydrogels and Their Biomedical Applications

Abstract

Hydrogels have long been explored as attractive materials for biomedical applications given their outstanding biocompatibility, high water content, and versatile fabrication platforms into materials with different physiochemical properties and geometries. Nonetheless, conventional hydrogels suffer from weak mechanical properties, restricting their use in persistent load-bearing applications often required of materials used in medical settings. Thus, the fabrication of mechanically robust hydrogels that can prolong the lifetime of clinically suitable materials under uncompromising in vivo conditions is of great interest. This review focuses on design considerations and strategies to construct such tough hydrogels. Several promising advances in the proposed use of specialty tough hydrogels for soft actuators, drug delivery vehicles, adhesives, coatings, and in tissue engineering settings are highlighted.

Bioink Formulations for Bone Tissue Regeneration

“…The advantage of ICEs over DNs is that the breakup of the sacrificial bonds is temporary. Upon external deformation, the tightly crosslinked ionic bonds break due to their brittleness, resulting in a series of microscopic segments, but the soft covalent network could use the viscous dissipation mechanism to prevent such microcracks from developing into macrocracks (Fuchs et al, 2019). If the external stress disappears at this point, ionic bonds could reform to repair the cracks.…”

“…In here, the ECM mimics are commonly cytocompatible polymeric matrices, such as hydrogels, polyesters, and polymer-ceramic composites (Jakus et al, 2016;Rosales and Anseth, 2016;Nicolas et al, 2020), which require extensive research input from the material research community. It has been demonstrated extensively that hydrogels are greatly suitable for the biomedical applications due to their excellent biocompatibility and biodegradability, outstanding hydrophilicity, controllable permeability, and simple manufacturing methods (Fuchs et al, 2019).…”

A Comprehensive Review on in Situ Gels

“…Hydro-gels consist of cross-links to serve to accommodate a considerable amount of air, and it retains enormous amounts of water and biological fluids to swell. Hydrogels are also classified into two types (i.e., preformed hydrogels and in situ gels) [8].…”

Comparison of Scaffolds Fabricated via 3D Printing and Salt Leaching: In Vivo Imaging, Biodegradation, and Inflammation

“…Salt leaching is among the most common methods used to fabricate 3D scaffolds [ 3 , 4 , 5 ]. Biocompatible materials that are currently used to fabricate 3D scaffolds via the salt-leaching method include natural biomaterials, such as collagen, hyaluronic acid, and gelatin, as well as synthetic materials, such as polyester and polyethylene glycol (PEG) [ 6 , 7 , 8 ]. Synthetic polyesters can be precisely designed to have specific molecular weights and compositions [ 9 , 10 , 11 , 12 ].…”