School of Medicine , South China University of Technology , Guangzhou 510006 , People's Republic of China.
National Engineering Research Center for Tissue Restoration and Reconstruction , South China University of Technology , Guangzhou 510006 , People's Republic of China.
Biomacromolecules. 2018 Jun 11;19(6):1939-1949. doi: 10.1021/acs.biomac.7b01688. Epub 2018 Feb 5.
Hydrogels with self-healing features that can spontaneously repair themselves upon mechanical damage are increasingly attractive for biomedical applications. Many attempts have been made to develop unique hydrogels possessing this property, as well as stimuli-responsiveness and biocompatibility; however, the hydrogel fabrication strategies often involve specific design of functional monomers that are able to optimally provide reversible physical or chemical interactions. Here, we report that weak hydrogen bonds, provided by oligo(ethylene glycol) methacrylate (OEGMA) and methacrylic acid (MAA), a monomer combination that is commonly used to prepare chemically cross-linking hydrogels, can generate self-healable hydrogels with mechanically resilient and adhesive properties through a facile one-step free radical copolymerization. The hydrogen bonds break and reform, providing an effective energy dissipation mechanism and synergic mechanical reinforcement. The physical properties can be simply tuned by OEGMA/MAA ratio control and reversible pH adjustment. Furthermore, the hydrogel can serve as a robust template for biomineralization to produce hydrogel composite that facilitate cell attachment and proliferations. This work is synthetically simple and dramatically increases the choice of amendable and adhesive hydrogels for industrial and biomedical applications.
具有自修复功能的水凝胶在受到机械损伤时能够自动修复，因此越来越受到生物医学应用的青睐。人们已经尝试了许多方法来开发具有这种特性、刺激响应性和生物相容性的独特水凝胶；然而，水凝胶的制造策略通常涉及功能单体的特定设计，这些单体能够提供最佳的可逆物理或化学相互作用。在这里，我们报告说，由聚乙二醇甲基丙烯酸酯（OEGMA）和甲基丙烯酸（MAA）提供的弱氢键，这是一种常用的制备化学交联水凝胶的单体组合，通过简单的一步自由基共聚可以生成具有机械弹性和粘性的自修复水凝胶。氢键断裂和重组，提供了有效的能量耗散机制和协同机械增强。物理性能可以通过 OEGMA/MAA 比例控制和可逆 pH 值调节来简单地调节。此外，水凝胶可以作为生物矿化的坚固模板，产生促进细胞附着和增殖的水凝胶复合材料。这项工作的合成方法简单，极大地增加了可修饰和可粘附水凝胶在工业和生物医学应用中的选择。
