Stiff, strong, and tear-resistant physical hydrogels with widely tunable toughness by post-treatments

Author:

Zhao Yu123,Xia Bing Hu13,Wang Lei4,Liu Yang1,Zu Lei1,Lian Hui Qin1,Cui Xiu Guo1,Wang Hao1

Affiliation:

1. Beijing Key Lab of Special Elastomer Composite Materials, College of New Materials and Chemical Engineering , Beijing Institute of Petrochemical Technology , Beijing 102617 , P.R. China

2. School of Health & Nutrition , Weihai Vocational College , Weihai , 264210 , P.R. China

3. College of Materials Science and Engineering , Beijing University of Chemical Technology , Beijing 100029 , P.R. China

4. Guangdong Research Institute of Petrochemical and Fine Chemical Engineering , Guangzhou 510665 , P.R. China

Abstract

Abstract Synthetic polymeric hydrogel is a potential substitute for soft biological tissues. However, the poor mechanical properties of traditional synthetic hydrogels limit their applications in biological fields. Herein, a series of tough physical hydrogels have been prepared by micellar polymerization, in the existence of sodium bromide (NaBr), using methacrylic acid (MA) and stearyl acrylate (SA) as monomers, cetyltrimethyl ammonium bromide (CTAB) as cationic surfactant. The hydrogels exhibit excellent mechanical properties: modulus, toughness, and tearing fracture energy up to 7.8 MPa, 34 MJ m−3, and 16,600 J m−2, respectively. Moreover, it was found that the toughness of the hydrogels can be modulated in a very wide range by different post-treatments, e.g., dried/reswelling, freezing/thawing, or heated treatments. After post-treatments, the elastic physical hydrogels even turn into brittle plastics: modulus and toughness vary by 3 and 4 orders of magnitude, respectively. The mechanism for this wide tunability is attributed to the change of electrostatic attraction, crystallization, and phase separation during post-treatments.

Funder

National Natural Science Foundation of China

Beijing Municipal Natural Science Foundation

Publisher

Walter de Gruyter GmbH

Subject

Materials Chemistry,Polymers and Plastics,General Chemical Engineering

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