A comparative study of tough hydrogen bonding dissipating hydrogels made with different network structures.

ABSTRACT: Hydrogels are excellent soft materials to interface with biological systems. Precise control and tunability of dissipative properties of gels are particularly interesting in tissue engineering applications. In this work, we produced hydrogels with tunable dissipative properties by photopolymerizing a second polymer within a preformed cross-linked hydrogel network of poly(acrylamide). We explored second networks made with different structures and capacity to hydrogen bond with the first network, namely linear poly(acrylic acid) and branched poly(tannic acid). Gels incorporating a second network made with poly(tannic acid) exhibited excellent stiffness (0.35 ± 0.035 MPa) and toughness (1.64 ± 0.26 MJ m^-3) compared to the poly(acrylic acid) counterparts. We also demonstrate a strat

SUBMITTER: Narasimhan BN 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9419215 | biostudies-literature | 2021 May

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature