Kim Yuna, Song Jaekwang, Park Seong Chae, Ahn Minchul, Park Myung Jin, Song Sung Hyuk, Yoo Si-Youl, Hong Seung Gweon, Hong Byung Hee
Department of Chemistry Seoul National University, Seoul 08826, Korea.
Graphene Research Center, Advanced Institute of Convergence Technology, Suwon 16229, Korea.
Nanomaterials (Basel). 2021 Aug 25;11(9):2169. doi: 10.3390/nano11092169.
As a smart stimulus-responsive material, hydrogel has been investigated extensively in many research fields. However, its mechanical brittleness and low strength have mattered, and conventional photoinitiators used during the polymerization steps exhibit high toxicity, which limits the use of hydrogels in the field of biomedical applications. Here, we address the dual functions of graphene quantum dots (GQDs), one to trigger the synthesis of hydrogel as photoinitiators and the other to improve the mechanical strength of the as-synthesized hydrogel. GQDs embedded in the network effectively generated radicals when exposed to sunlight, leading to the initiation of polymerization, and also played a significant role in improving the mechanical strength of the crosslinked chains. Thus, we expect that the resulting hydrogel incorporated with GQDs would enable a wide range of applications that require biocompatibility as well as higher mechanical strength, including novel hydrogel contact lenses and bioscaffolds for tissue engineering.
作为一种智能刺激响应材料，水凝胶已在许多研究领域得到广泛研究。然而，其机械脆性和低强度一直是问题所在，并且在聚合步骤中使用的传统光引发剂具有高毒性，这限制了水凝胶在生物医学应用领域的使用。在此，我们阐述了石墨烯量子点（GQDs）的双重功能，一是作为光引发剂触发水凝胶的合成，二是提高合成水凝胶的机械强度。嵌入网络中的GQDs在暴露于阳光时有效地产生自由基，导致聚合反应的引发，并且在提高交联链的机械强度方面也发挥了重要作用。因此，我们期望所得的含有GQDs的水凝胶能够实现广泛的应用，这些应用需要生物相容性以及更高的机械强度，包括新型水凝胶隐形眼镜和用于组织工程的生物支架。
