Related Experiment Video
Updated: Oct 12, 2025
A Freeze-Thawing Method to Prepare Chitosan-Polyvinyl alcohol Hydrogels Without Crosslinking Agents and Diflunisal Release Studies
Published on: January 14, 2020
Robust, anti-freezing and conductive bonding of chitosan-based double-network hydrogels for stable-performance
Yanyu Yang1, Manhua Zhou2, Junbo Peng2
1College of Materials Science and Engineering, Zhengzhou University, Zhengzhou, Henan 450001, China; Beijing National Laboratory for Molecular Sciences, Institute of Chemistry, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China.
Abstract:
Unstable hydrogel-substrate interfaces and defunctionalization at low temperature severely restrict versatile applications of hydrogel-based systems. Herein, various chitosan-polyacrylamide double-network (CS-PAM DN) ionic hydrogels were chemically linked with diverse substrates to construct robust and anti-freezing hydrogel-substrate combination, wherein the destructible CS physical network rendered effective energy dissipation mechanism to significantly enhanced the cohesion of hydrogels and the covalent linkage between PAM network with substrate surface strongly improved the interfacial adhesion. The synergistic effects enabled the CS-PAM DN hydrogels to be tightly bonded on diverse metals and inorganics. Impressively, the hydrogel-substrate combinations were freezing tolerant to well-maintain high interfacial toughness at low temperature. Notably, due to the high toughness and conductivity of hydrogel-metal interface, the hydrogel-metal combination can be utilized as a multi-model flexible sensor to detect strain and pressure within broad temperature range. This work may provide a platform for construction and emerging application of robust, anti-freezing and stable-performance hydrogel-based systems.
