Synthetic hydrogels are of great interest for use in the field of biomaterials, but their brittle nature has limited their potential applications.  One reason is that many conventional cross-linking techniques result in inhomogeneous network structures that are prone to fracture.  We have utilized the simple and efficient photoinitiated thiol-norbornene chemistry to cross-link end-functionalized hydrophilic poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) chains, resulting in robust hydrogels with a well-defined network architecture.  These highly swollen PEG hydrogels (>95% water) exhibited a resilience of nearly 100% at strains up to 300%.  This is comparable to the insect protein resilin, which is one of the most resilient materials known.  The properties of these PEG-based networks were tuned by the incorporation of hydrophobic poydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) chains.  Varying the ratio of PEG to PDMS effectively controlled the hydrogel swelling and mechanical properties, while maintaining a resilience >97%.

Highly resilient PEG-based hydrogels

244th National Meeting (2012)

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