Tough and Self‐Recoverable Thin Hydrogel Membranes for Biological Applications

Abstract

Tough and self-recoverable hydrogel membranes with micrometer-scale thickness are promising for biomedical applications, which, however, rarely be realized due to the intrinsic brittleness of hydrogels. In this work, for the first time, by combing noncovalent DN strategy and spin-coating method, we successfully fabricated thin (thickness: 5-100 µm), yet tough (work of extension at fracture: 10 5 -10 7 J m −3 ) and 100% self-recoverable hydrogel membranes with high water content (62-97 wt%) in large size (≈100 cm 2 ). Amphiphilic triblock copolymers, which form physical gels by self-assembly, were used for the first network. Linear polymers that physically associate with the hydrophilic midblocks of the first network, were chosen for the second network. The internetwork associations serve as reversible sacrificial bonds that impart toughness and self-recovery properties on the hydrogel membranes. The excellent mechanical properties of these obtained tough and thin gel membranes are comparable, or even superior to many biological membranes. The in vitro and in vivo tests show that these hydrogel membranes are biocompatible, and postoperative nonadhesive to neighboring organs. The excellent mechanical and biocompatible properties make these thin hydrogel membranes potentially suitable for use as biological or postoperative antiadhesive membranes.

A Highly Stretchable, Tough, Self‐Healing, and Thermoprocessable Polyacrylamide–Chitosan Supramolecular Hydrogel

“…Besides, these gels were only moderately stretchable (approximately seven times their original length). Recently, this non‐covalent double‐network strategy was combined with spin coating to fabricate thin (≈µm), tough, and self‐recoverable hydrogel membranes . These free‐standing membranes were shown to be biocompatible and possessing comparable or better mechanical properties than biological membranes.…”

Tough Triblock Copolymer Hydrogels with Different Micromorphologies for Medical and Sensory Materials

“…Recent approaches have greatly improved the mechanical robustness of TBC hydrogels. [24][25][26] Particularly, we produced extremely tough semi-interpenetrating Table S1. As controls, we additionally prepared two types of TBC hydrogels using the fast-drying process (without extra DMF in the vacuum drier container), named as B(FD-S) hydrogels, and using the reported solvent exchange process, 25 named as B(SE) hydrogels.…”

Poly(l‐glutamic acid)‐based micellar hydrogel with improved mechanical performance and proteins loading

“…Hydrogel 0 was comprised of a hydrophilic and chemical crosslinking network. As the external load was out of the range, the stress was transferred to the compact network without effective stress dissipation, which made the network tend to break down, and thus failed to withstand big deformation. And G’ of hydrogel 0 was the highest in the test and remained about 2 orders of magnitude higher than G” ; thus, the hydrogel 0 showed a solid‐like response, and was broken under 40% strain.…”