Issue 3, 2022 - Highly elastic hydrogel material was successfully developed

Highly elastic hydrogel materials were successfully developed

Recently, researchers from the Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, introduced highly branched silica nanoparticles into the moderately chemically crosslinked polymer glue network from the perspective of polymer/nanoparticle interaction regulation, and developed a class of pure elastic nanocomposite hydrogel materials
with high water content.

Polymer hydrogels, as a kind of polymer three-dimensional network formed by chemical crosslinking or physical interaction, show excellent biocompatibility due to their high water content similar to biological tissues, and show application potential
in tissue engineering, drug release, biosensing and other fields.
However, the mechanical properties of traditional hydrogels are poor, and their practical application is limited
.

Under the condition of 96% water content, this kind of nanocomposite hydrogel showed up to 11.
5 times the elongation at break
.
Due to the complete elimination of the energy dissipation pathway in the gel network, such nanocomposite hydrogels have almost no stress hysteresis under cyclic loading, exhibiting pure elastic mechanical behavior
similar to springs.
This behavior also imparts excellent fatigue resistance to these composite hydrogel materials, and dynamic load tests in aqueous environment have shown that these nanocomposite hydrogels can maintain the integrity
of their crosslinking network after 5000 cycles of tensile treatment.