Hydrogels with self-healing ability, excellent mechanical properties and biocompatibility prepared from oxidized gum arabic

Abstract

The use of biomass materials in the preparation of hydrogels has received considerable attention. In this study, arabic gum aldehyde was prepared by oxidizing o-hydroxyl group of gum arabic with sodium periodate, and then subjected to acetalization with gelatin in the presence of acrylamide to prepare IPN hydrogel. The resultant IPN hydrogel not only exhibited excellent mechanical properties and biocompatibility, but also have multifunctionality. And its healing efficiency reached 90% after 24 h of healing. Moreover, the IPN hydrogels exhibited excellent adhesion ability for a variety of surfaces. Furthermore, as indicated by MTT assay, the survival rate of cells treated with hydrogels remained above 90%; this suggests that the obtained IPN hydrogels may be used as a drug carrier. Taken together, the established hydrogels have excellent mechanical properties, biocompatibility, and versatility, thus could be employed as tissue engineering scaffolds and drug carriers, or applied in wearable devices.