Pingping Xu, Huaxiu Xu, Yang Yang, Xionglei Wang, Wenli An, Yan Hu, Shimei Xu
Journal of materials chemistry. B 2020 Apr 01Susceptibility of traditional hydrogels to water leads to the deterioration of their mechanical properties and dimensional instability. Inspired by bone tissues, here, we report a nonswellable gradient hydrogel with adjustable mechanical properties via a simple acid-heat treatment of polyamide-based hydrogels. Both the hydrophilicity/hydrophobicity and crosslinking degree of the gel can be simultaneously regulated by taking advantage of the conversion of amide groups to imide groups in the hydrogel. A gradient imide structure is formed with a dense layer near the surface of the gel. The resultant hydrogel has no size change both in water and 0.9 wt% NaCl solution while it shows high strength with a compressive stress of 70 MPa at 70% strain at a higher imidization degree. At a lower imidization degree, the gel has excellent fatigue resistance and resilience and can return to its original state after 5 cycles of 90% strain.
Pingping Xu, Huaxiu Xu, Yang Yang, Xionglei Wang, Wenli An, Yan Hu, Shimei Xu. A nonswellable gradient hydrogel with tunable mechanical properties. Journal of materials chemistry. B. 2020 Apr 01;8(13):2702-2708
PMID: 32149318
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