Super Strong and Tough Hydrogel through Physical Crosslinking and Molecular Alignment.

Super Strong and Tough Hydrogel through Physical Crosslinking and Molecular Alignment.
Biomacromolecules. 2019 Oct 23;:
Authors: Chen W, Li N, Ma Y, Minus ML, Benson K, Lu X, Wang X, Ling X, Zhu H
Abstract
Hydrogels are attracting increasing attention due to their potential use in various fields. However, most of the existing hydrogels have limitations in either dissipating mechanical energy or maintaining high stretchability under deformation, thus don't possess high mechanical properties. Herein, poly (vinyl alcohol) (PVA)-tannic acid (TA) hydrogels with both high mechanical strength and stretchability were obtained via a step by step physical crosslinking and molecular alignment method. Saline triggered physical interactions serve as "sacrifice domains" to dissipate energy and endow PVA based hydrogel with high mechanical strength (≈ 16 MPa) and stretchability (≈ 1000 %). Due to the reversible arranging and disassociating property of physical interactions, PVA-TA hydrogels show excellent shape memory performance. We further demonstrated an effective approach to fabricate strong and aligned PVA-TA thread. The resultant well-aligned PVA-TA dry thread reveals an ultra-high mechanical tensile strength of up to 750 MPa, nearly 45 times higher than PVA-TA thread with no alignment. Wide-angle X-ray (WXRD) 2D diffraction images further confirmed the alignment of PVA fibers in stretching direction.
PMID: 31644270 [PubMed - as s...

Source: Biomacromolecules - October 22, 2019 Category: Biochemistry Authors: Chen W, Li N, Ma Y, Minus ML, Benson K, Lu X, Wang X, Ling X, Zhu H Tags: Biomacromolecules Source Type: research