Strong and Fatigue-Resistant Hydrogels via Poor Solvent Evaporation Assisted Hot-Stretching for Tendon Repair.

ABSTRACT: It is highly desirable but still remains challenging to develop high-performance hydrogels with satisfactory mechanical properties for tissue engineering. Here, anisotropic yet transparent hydrogels (AHs) are prepared for tendon repair via a facile "poor solvent evaporation assisted hot-stretching" strategy. AHs have great mechanical properties with tensile strength, toughness, and fracture energy as high as 33.14 ± 2.05 MPa, 44.1 ± 3.5 MJ m^-3, and 106.18 ± 7.2 kJ m^-2, respectively. Especially, AHs show unique flaw-insensitive characteristics, and cracks can only deflect along the fiber alignment direction rather than propagate transverse to this direction, showing an interesting self-protection function. The high strength, toughness, and fatigue resistance originate

SUBMITTER: Li H 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12302550 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature