Abstract
Tough hydrogels that are capable of efficient mechanical energy dissipation and withstanding large strains have potential applications in diverse areas. However, most reported fabrication strategies are performed in multiple steps with long-time UV irradiation or heating at high temperatures, limiting their biological and industrial applications. Hydrogels formed with a single pair of mechanisms are unstable in harsh conditions. Here we report a one-step, biocompatible, straightforward and general strategy to prepare tough soft hydrogels in a few tens of seconds under mild conditions. With a multimechanism design, the network structures remarkably improve the mechanical properties of hydrogels and maintain their high toughness in various environments. The broad compatibility of the proposed method with a spectrum of printing technologies makes it suitable for potential applications requiring high-resolution patterns/structures. This strategy opens horizons to inspire the design and application of high-performance hydrogels in fields of material chemistry, tissue engineering, and flexible electronics.
Highlights
Tough hydrogels that are capable of efficient mechanical energy dissipation and withstanding large strains have potential applications in diverse areas
Non-selective thermal-initiated and spontaneous polymerizations are inconvenient for printing complex 2D and 3D microstructures with high resolutions, which are needed for advanced applications in tissue engineering, ionotronics, etc
A single pair of energy dissipation mechanisms that relying on single ionic-crosslinked, supramolecular or another rigid network to dissipate mechanical energy is sometimes ineffective in harsh environments due to the partial disruption of unstable rigid works in hydrogels, which considerably decreases their toughness[23,24]
Summary
Tough hydrogels that are capable of efficient mechanical energy dissipation and withstanding large strains have potential applications in diverse areas. We report a one-step, biocompatible, straightforward and general strategy to prepare tough soft hydrogels in a few tens of seconds under mild conditions. The broad compatibility of the proposed method with a spectrum of printing technologies makes it suitable for potential applications requiring highresolution patterns/structures This strategy opens horizons to inspire the design and application of high-performance hydrogels in fields of material chemistry, tissue engineering, and flexible electronics. The multimechanism design enables an increase in the hydrogel elasticity, a decrease in its plastic deformation, and retention of high toughness in various environments This light-assisted strategy is compatible with many different lithography techniques for manufacturing high-resolution 2D/3D microstructures (~100 μm). To the best of our knowledge, this is a rapid, one-step fabrication of tough hydrogels via a visiblelight-assisted multimechanism design (Supplementary Table 1)
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