Design and Synthesys of Highly Stretchable and Tough Adhesive Hydrogels for Dry and Wet Biomedical Applications

Abstract

The development of less invasive procedures and devices in the biomedical applications of wound closure and healing is an important and essential task. The healing process is facilitated by proper closure of the surgical wound; traditionally a particularly invasive practice. Tissue adhesives design should incorporate simplicity, safety, and painless removal from the skin. Moreover, these materials should have adequate adhesive strength, be tough enough to incorporate the mechanical skin behaviors, and must also show compatibility with body fluids as well as cells and tissues. The design of tough adhesives (TAs) can potentially enable many applications, including the gluing of tissues and attaching devices in vivo, tissue repair, and can be used as a hemostatic dressing because of their compatibility with blood exposure. This work reviews many strategies to design tough hydrogels with the introduction of non-covalent bonds and the construction of stretchable polymer networks and interpenetrated networks, such as a double-network hydrogel. To overcome such difficulties, some synthetic wet adhesives emulating natural adhesive materials of marine organisms have been investigated.