A graphene hybrid supramolecular hydrogel with high stretchability, self-healable and photothermally responsive properties for wound healing.

Haifeng Zhang,Dagan Zhang,Canwen Chen,Shiya Zheng

doi:10.1039/d0ra09106e

Abstract

Wound healing is a ubiquitous healthcare problem in clinical wound management. In this paper, the fabrication of a graphene hybrid supramolecular hydrogel (GS hydrogel) for wound dressing applications is demonstrated. The hydrogel is composed of two components, including N-acryloyl glycinamide (NAGA) as the scaffold and graphene as the photothermally responsive active site for photothermal therapy. Based on the multiple hydrogen bonds between the dual amide motifs in the side chain of N-acryloyl glycinamide, the hydrogel exhibits high tensile strength (≈1.7 MPa), good stretchability (≈400%) and self-recoverability. In addition, the GS hydrogel shows excellent antibacterial activity towards methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus (MRSA), benefiting from the addition of graphene that possesses great photothermal transition activity (≈85%). Significantly, in vivo animal experiments also demonstrated that the GS hydrogel effectively accelerates the wound healing processes by eradicating microbes, promoting collagen deposition and angiogenesis. In summary, this GS hydrogel demonstrates excellent mechanical performance, photothermal antimicrobial activity, and promotes skin tissue regeneration, and so has great application potential as a promising wound dressing material in clinical use.

Highlights

The fabrication of GS hydrogels comprising N-acryloyl glycinamide (NAGA) and graphene were prepared via photoinitiated copolymerization
For the other groups that healed in a partial approach, excellent healing was observed where the two segments touched. These results indicate that GS hydrogels inherit excellent self-repairing properties, brought about by hydrogen bonds in NAGA that has high recovery and reversibility
The hydrogel is composed of two components, including a NAGA hydrogel scaffold and photothermally responsive active graphene

Summary

Introduction

A near-infrared (NIR) light-responsive graphene hybrid supramolecular hydrogel with high stretchability, self-healable and photothermally responsive properties, was developed for wound healing. Paper graphene and its derivatives, as emerging two-dimensional (2D) materials, have been studied widely in many elds, such as in biomedical science, energy, and environmental applications, because of their advantages of electrical, mechanical, and thermal properties.[35,36,37,38] It should be noted that much less efforts have been made in the preparation of graphene hybrid supramolecular hydrogels. The development of more graphene composited supramolecular hydrogels is urgently required, further promoting their biomedical applications, such as for wound healing

Methods

Results

Conclusion