Wang Zengqiang, Lü Shaoyu, Liu Yanhui, Li Tao, Yan Jia, Bai Xiao, Ni Boli, Yang Jing, Liu Mingzhu
State Key Laboratory of Applied Organic Chemistry, Key Laboratory of Nonferrous Metal Chemistry and Resources Utilization of Gansu Province, College of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering , Lanzhou University , Lanzhou 730000 , People's Republic of China.
Key Laboratory of Life-Organic Analysis of Shandong Province, School of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering , Qufu Normal University , Qufu 273100 , People's Republic of China.
ACS Appl Mater Interfaces. 2019 Aug 28;11(34):31393-31401. doi: 10.1021/acsami.9b10753. Epub 2019 Aug 14.
Designing muscle-inspired hydrogels that possess structure and bioactivity similar to muscles is an eternal pursuit in material sciences and tissue engineering. However, the development of a muscle-inspired hydrogel via the formation of noncovalent interactions remains challenging, and its application in sustained loading situations such as cyclic stresses is limited. Herein, H-bonds and microcrystalline domains were introduced, and a noncovalent muscle-inspired hydrogel was developed to mimic both the physical structure and functionality of muscles at the macroscopic level. The hydrogel exhibited excellent mechanical properties (a fracture strength of 2.16 ± 0.08 MPa, fracture strain of 830 ± 23%, elastic modulus of 275 ± 9 KPa, and toughness of 7.04 ± 0.80 MJ/m), a large energy dissipation (2.00 ± 0.27 MJ/m at 600% elongation), and a rapid self-recovery (92 ± 1% toughness recovery within 20 min). Antifatigue behavior of the muscle-inspired hydrogel was observed upon successive tensile and compressive cyclic loadings. Under 100 cycles of loadings, the robustness of the hydrogel has been maintained and even improved, which are achieved due to strain-induced orientation. Furthermore, the hydrogel was found to be self-healed. This hydrogel promises to be among the most relevant drivers for the development of new-generation muscle-inspired hydrogels in the next decade.
设计具有与肌肉相似的结构和生物活性的肌肉启发型水凝胶是材料科学和组织工程领域一直以来的追求。然而，通过形成非共价相互作用来开发肌肉启发型水凝胶仍然具有挑战性，并且其在诸如循环应力等持续加载情况下的应用也受到限制。在此，引入了氢键和微晶域，并开发了一种非共价肌肉启发型水凝胶，以在宏观层面上模拟肌肉的物理结构和功能。该水凝胶表现出优异的力学性能（断裂强度为2.16±0.08兆帕，断裂应变830±23%，弹性模量275±9千帕，韧性7.04±0.80兆焦/平方米）、高能量耗散（在600%伸长率下为2.00±0.27兆焦/平方米）以及快速自我恢复（20分钟内韧性恢复92±1%）。在连续的拉伸和压缩循环加载下观察到了肌肉启发型水凝胶的抗疲劳行为。在100次加载循环下，水凝胶的稳健性得以维持甚至提高，这是由应变诱导取向实现的。此外，还发现该水凝胶能够自我愈合。这种水凝胶有望成为未来十年新一代肌肉启发型水凝胶发展的最重要推动因素之一。
