Hydrogels are attractive for their wide applications as scaffolds for tissue engineering, vehicles for drug delivery, actuators for optics and fluidics, and model extracellular matrices for biological studies. The performance of hydrogel applications, however, is often severely limited by their poor mechanical behavior. Herein, we present a scalable methodology to create highly stretchable, interpenetrating structured hydrogels by combining a green biomass—alginate and polyacrylamide. Our approach causes the naturally abundant and sustainable alginate to assemble into elastic hydrogels with tunable water-content and desirable shapes on a large scale. The resulting hydrogels exhibit high water content of &gt; 90 wt%, rapid recovery from 20 times deformation, efficient energy absorption, and high transparency. Moreover, by incorporating antimicrobial materials such as halamine and light active anthraquinone derivatives, highly antimicrobial hydrogels can be facilely achieved. The successful synthesis of such fascinating materials may provide new insights into the design and development of multifunctional hydrogels for various applications.

Biomass-derived highly stretchable and elastic hydrogels with effective antimicrobial activity

253rd National Meeting (2017)

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