School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing 100081, P. R. China.
Nanoscale. 2017 Oct 19;9(40):15470-15476. doi: 10.1039/c7nr04722c.
Self-healing hydrogels like tissues or organs which are repaired automatically in response to damage show great promise. However, it remains a challenge to develop novel functional nanoparticles as crosslinkers to prepare tough and self-healing nanocomposite hydrogels. Here, we report the preparation of water-soluble ultrasmall aluminum hydroxide nanoparticles with a diameter of 2-3 nm through a simple sol-gel method. Furthermore, a tough nanocomposite hydrogel is prepared by the in situ copolymerization of acylamide and 2-acrylamido-2-methyl propane sulfonic acid in the presence of aluminum hydroxide nanoparticles. The resulting hydrogels exhibit high compressive strength of 18.9 MPa and an elongation at break of ∼2100%. Importantly, the Al-NC gel displayed a high self-healing efficiency of 86% without any external stimulus at room temperature. Moreover, we found an interesting multi-hierarchical porous morphology of the Al-NC gel depending on the contents of the aluminum hydroxide nanoparticles. The tough nanocomposite hydrogel might provide a novel promising avenue for designing advanced self-healable soft materials for various biomedical applications.
具有自我修复功能的水凝胶类似于组织或器官，可以自动响应损伤进行修复，具有很大的应用前景。然而，开发新型功能纳米粒子作为交联剂来制备坚韧的自修复纳米复合水凝胶仍然是一个挑战。在这里，我们通过简单的溶胶-凝胶法报告了直径为 2-3nm 的水溶性超小氢氧化铝纳米粒子的制备。此外，通过在氢氧化铝纳米粒子存在下酰亚胺和 2-丙烯酰胺基-2-甲基丙烷磺酸的原位共聚反应，制备了坚韧的纳米复合水凝胶。所得水凝胶表现出高达 18.9MPa 的高压缩强度和约 2100%的断裂伸长率。重要的是，在室温下，Al-NC 凝胶无需任何外部刺激即可显示出 86%的高自修复效率。此外，我们发现 Al-NC 凝胶具有有趣的多尺度多孔形态，这取决于氢氧化铝纳米粒子的含量。坚韧的纳米复合水凝胶可能为设计用于各种生物医学应用的先进自修复软材料提供了一条新的有前途的途径。
