Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA.
School of Optical and Electronic Information, and Wuhan National Laboratory for Optoelectronics, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Wuhan, 430074, China.
Adv Mater. 2019 Feb;31(7):e1807101. doi: 10.1002/adma.201807101. Epub 2018 Dec 20.
Slippery and hydrophilic surfaces find critical applications in areas as diverse as biomedical devices, microfluidics, antifouling, and underwater robots. Existing methods to achieve such surfaces rely mostly on grafting hydrophilic polymer brushes or coating hydrogel layers, but these methods suffer from several limitations. Grafted polymer brushes are prone to damage and do not provide sufficient mechanical compliance due to their nanometer-scale thickness. Hydrogel coatings are applicable only for relatively simple geometries, precluding their use for the surfaces with complex geometries and features. Here, a new method is proposed to interpenetrate hydrophilic polymers into the surface of diverse polymers with arbitrary shapes to form naturally integrated "hydrogel skins." The hydrogel skins exhibit tissue-like softness (Young's modulus ≈ 30 kPa), have uniform and tunable thickness in the range of 5-25 µm, and can withstand prolonged shearing forces with no measurable damage. The hydrogel skins also provide superior low-friction, antifouling, and ionically conductive surfaces to the polymer substrates without compromising their original mechanical properties and geometry. Applications of the hydrogel skins on inner and outer surfaces of various practical polymer devices including medical tubing, Foley catheters, cardiac pacemaker leads, and soft robots on massive scales are further demonstrated.
滑润亲水表面在生物医学设备、微流控、防污和水下机器人等多个领域有着重要的应用。目前实现这种表面的方法主要依赖于接枝亲水聚合物刷或涂覆水凝胶层,但这些方法存在几个局限性。接枝聚合物刷容易损坏,并且由于其纳米级厚度,提供的机械顺应性不足。水凝胶涂层仅适用于相对简单的几何形状,排除了它们在具有复杂几何形状和特征的表面上的应用。在这里,提出了一种新的方法,可以将亲水聚合物渗透到具有任意形状的各种聚合物的表面中,形成自然集成的“水凝胶皮”。水凝胶皮表现出类组织的柔软性(杨氏模量≈30 kPa),厚度均匀且可调,范围为 5-25 µm,可以承受长时间的剪切力而不会造成可测量的损坏。水凝胶皮还为聚合物基底提供了优异的低摩擦、防污和离子导电表面,而不会损害其原始机械性能和几何形状。进一步展示了水凝胶皮在各种实用聚合物设备的内外表面上的应用,包括医疗管、 Foley 导管、心脏起搏器引线和大规模软机器人。
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