We all encounter gels in our daily lives – from the soft, sticky substances you put into your hair to the jelly-like ingredients in all kinds of foods. Although human skin has gel-like characteristics, it has unique qualities that are difficult to replicate. It combines high stiffness and flexibility, and has significant self-healing ability, usually fully healing within 24 hours of injury.
So far, artificial gels have either managed to replicate this high stiffness or The self-healing properties of natural skin, but not both. Now a team of researchers from the University of Aalto and Bayreuth are the first to develop hydrogels with unique structures that overcome early limitations and open the door to applications such as drug delivery, wound healing, soft robotic sensors and artificial skin.
In the breakthrough research, researchers added extremely large and ultra-thin clay nanosheets to the hydrogel, which are usually soft and soft. The result is a highly ordered structure with dense entangled polymers between nanosheets, which not only improves the mechanical properties of the hydrogel, but also allows the material to irrigate itself.
The study was published on March 7 in the famous Natural Materials.
Healing through “entanglement”
The secret of the material is not only the organized arrangement of the nanosheets, but also the polymers entangled between them and the process of baking as simple as baking. Postdoctoral fellow Chen Liang The powder of the monomer is mixed with water containing nanosheets. The mixture is then placed under an UV lamp, similar to the one used to set up the gel nail polish. Liang explained: “UV radiation from the lamp causes individual molecules to bind together, making everything into elastic solids – gels.”
“Entangling means that thin polymer layers begin to twist each other like tiny wool yarns, but in a random order. ” Zhang Zhangfrom the University of Aalto. “When the polymer is completely entangled, their differences are indistinguishable from each other. They are very dynamic and mobile at the molecular level and when you cut them, they start to intertwin together again.
After four hours of cutting with a knife, the material is already 80 or 90% self-healing. After 24 hours, it is usually completely repaired. Additionally, the one-millimeter-thick hydrogel contains 10,000 layers of nanosheets, making the material as stiff as human skin and has comparable stretching and flexibility.
“Rid, strong and self-healing hydrogels have long been a challenge. We found a mechanism to enhance conventional soft hydrogels. This could revolutionize the development of new materials with bioinspiring properties. ” Zhang said.
Get inspiration from nature
‘This work is an exciting example of how biomaterials inspire us to find new combinations of properties for synthetic materials. Imagine a robot that repairs self-solidated, self-heals skin or synthetic tissue. ” Olli Ikkalafrom the University of Aalto. Even though there may be some way to go before real-world applications, the current results represent a critical leap. “It’s a basic discovery that updates material design rules.”
The collaboration is led by Dr. Hang Zhang, Professor Olli Ikkala and Professor Josef Breu. The synthetic clay nanosheets were designed and manufactured by Professor Josef Breu of the University of Bayreuth, Germany.
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