Journal
ACS NANO
Volume 11, Issue 11, Pages 11074-11081Publisher
AMER CHEMICAL SOC
DOI: 10.1021/acsnano.7b05109
Keywords
hydrogel; strain-stiffening; self-healing; dynamical covalent bonds; flexible network
Categories
Funding
- Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC)
- Canada Research Chairs program
- Department of Energy, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, Division of Materials Sciences and Engineering [DE-FG02-87ER-45331]
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Biological tissues can accurately differentiate external mechanical stresses and actively select suitable strategies (e.g., reversible strain-stiffening, self-healing) to sustain or restore their integrity and related functionalities as required. Synthetic materials that can imitate the characteristics of biological tissues have a wide range of engineering and bioengineering applications. However, no success has been demonstrated to realize such strain stiffening behavior in synthetic networks, particularly using flexible polymers, which has remained a great challenge. Here, we present one such synthetic hydrogel material prepared from two flexible polymers (polyethylene glycol and branched polyethylenimine) that exhibits both strain-stiffening and self-healing capabilities. The developed synthetic hydrogel network not only mimics the main features of biological mechanically responsive systems but also autonomously self-heals after becoming damaged, thereby recovering its full capacity to perform its normal physiological functions.
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