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Gels
Special Issues
Recent Advances in Highly Stretchable and Resilient Hydrogels
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Recent Advances in Highly Stretchable and Resilient Hydrogels

A special issue of Gels (ISSN 2310-2861).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (1 June 2022) | Viewed by 4809

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Lidong Zhang

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
School of Chemistry and Molecular Engineering, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200241, China
Interests: stretchable and resilient hydrogels; smart hydrogels; design and fabrication of hollow hydrogels; surface/interfacial adhesion; surface patterning

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

It is my great pleasure to invite you to submit a research or review article to this Special Issue of Gels on “Recent Advances in Highly-Stretchable and Resilient Hydrogels”.

Possessing high stretch capacities and resilient performance are essential mechanical features of hydrogels for applications in soft robotics, bionic skins, tissue engineering, artificial muscles, and sensors. To enable the stretchable and rapidly resilient hydrogels, the elements in hydrogel frameworks should be able to maintain the mechanical stability or to construct reversible rapid interaction kinetics in response to eternal force. The structural design protocols that can endow hydrogels with high resilience remain a keen scope of interest in materials science. Recent developments of hydrogel design methodologies include interpenetrating and double-network hydrogels, protein-functionalized hydrogels, inorganic nanospheres-hybridized hydrogels, and small molecule-based supramolecular-polymer hydrogels where the dynamic chemical or physical bonds enable the rapid recovery of hydrogels by the high dissociation and association rates in the framework.

This Special Issue will mainly focus on the recent advances of different potential approaches to synthesize highly stretchable and resilient hydrogels for various specific applications in, but not limited to, sensing systems, biomedicines, robotics, soft electronics, bionics, and theoretical models.

Prof. Dr. Lidong Zhang
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Gels is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2100 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • synthetic methodology
  • characterization of highly stretchable and resilient hydrogel
  • double-network hydrogels
  • protein-functionalized hydrogels
  • hybridized hydrogels
  • supramolecular polymer hydrogels
  • stimuli-responsive hydrogels
  • mechanical property
  • theoretical model
  • applications

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Published Papers (2 papers)

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Research

13 pages, 2982 KiB  
Article
Anti-Freezing, Non-Drying, Localized Stiffening, and Shape-Morphing Organohydrogels
by Jiayan Shen, Shutong Du, Ziyao Xu, Tiansheng Gan, Stephan Handschuh-Wang and Xueli Zhang
Gels 2022, 8(6), 331; https://doi.org/10.3390/gels8060331 - 25 May 2022
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2105
Abstract
Artificial shape-morphing hydrogels are emerging toward various applications, spanning from electronic skins to healthcare. However, the low freezing and drying tolerance of hydrogels hinder their practical applications in challenging environments, such as subzero temperatures and arid conditions. Herein, we report on a shape-morphing [...] Read more.
Artificial shape-morphing hydrogels are emerging toward various applications, spanning from electronic skins to healthcare. However, the low freezing and drying tolerance of hydrogels hinder their practical applications in challenging environments, such as subzero temperatures and arid conditions. Herein, we report on a shape-morphing system of tough organohydrogels enabled by the spatially encoded rigid structures and its applications in conformal packaging of “island–bridge” stretchable electronics. To validate this method, programmable shape morphing of Fe (III) ion-stiffened Ca-alginate/polyacrylamide (PAAm) tough organohydrogels down to −50 °C, with long-term preservation of their 3D shapes at arid or even vacuum conditions, was successfully demonstrated, respectively. To further illustrate the potency of this approach, the as-made organohydrogels were employed as a material for the conformal packaging of non-stretchable rigid electronic components and highly stretchable liquid metal (galinstan) conductors, forming a so-called “island–bridge” stretchable circuit. The conformal packaging well addresses the mechanical mismatch between components with different elastic moduli. As such, the as-made stretchable shape-morphing device exhibits a remarkably high mechanical durability that can withstand strains as high as 1000% and possesses long-term stability required for applications under challenging conditions. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Highly Stretchable and Resilient Hydrogels)
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12 pages, 4377 KiB  
Article
Tough and Resilient Hydrogels Enabled by a Multifunctional Initiating and Cross-Linking Agent
by Zhenxing Cao, Zhaoyang Yuan, Rui Wu, Haitao Wu, Biqiang Jin, Jing Zheng and Jinrong Wu
Gels 2021, 7(4), 177; https://doi.org/10.3390/gels7040177 - 21 Oct 2021
Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2123
Abstract
Many high-strength hydrogels have been developed in recent years; however, few of them are both tough and resilient, and their intrinsic paradoxical nature makes designing a gel with both high toughness and high resilience a great challenge. To address this problem, we introduced [...] Read more.
Many high-strength hydrogels have been developed in recent years; however, few of them are both tough and resilient, and their intrinsic paradoxical nature makes designing a gel with both high toughness and high resilience a great challenge. To address this problem, we introduced both N,N,N,N-pentamethyldiethylenetriamine (PA) and N,N-methylenebisacrylamide (MBA) into polyacrylamide hydrogel networks to construct an entangled network that contains chemically cross-linked chains and branched chains simultaneously. The entanglements of branched chains can act as a physical cross-linking point to uniformly disperse stress on molecular chains, and chemical cross-linking ensures the stability of the hydrogel network. The increase in the number and length of branched chains is able to achieve an enhancement in strength while the slip of the entangled polymer chains can effectively achieve energy dissipation and can improve the toughness of the gel. Moreover, the resultant hydrogels exhibit an excellent resilience (>98%). Therefore, high toughness and resilience are achieved simultaneously. In addition, we also investigated the initiation mechanism of PA. This strategy creates a new way for the preparation of next-generation high toughness and high resilience hydrogel-based materials, which have promising applications in wearable, flexible strain/pressure sensors. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Recent Advances in Highly Stretchable and Resilient Hydrogels)
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