Environmentally adaptive polysaccharide-based hydrogels and their applications in extreme conditions: A review

Polysaccharide hydrogels are one of the most promising hydrogel materials due to their inherent characteristics, including biocompatibility, biodegradability, renewability, and easy modification, and their structure and functional designs have been widely researched to adapt to different application scenarios as well as to broaden their application fields. As typical wet-soft materials, the high water content and water-absorbing ability of polysaccharide-based hydrogels (PHs) are conducive to their wide biomedical applications, such as wound healing, tissue repair, and drug delivery. In addition, along with technological progress, PHs have shown potential application prospects in some high-tech fields, including human-computer interaction, intelligent driving, smart dressing, flexible sensors, etc. However, in practical applications, due to the poor ability of PHs to resist freezing below zero, dehydration at high temperature, and acid-base/swelling-induced deformation in a solution environment, they are prone to lose their wet-soft peculiarities, including structural integrity, injectability, flexibility, transparency, conductivity and other inherent characteristics, which greatly limit their high-tech applications. Hence, reducing their freezing point, enhancing their high-temperature dehydration resistance, and improving their extreme solution tolerance are powerful approaches to endow PHs with multienvironmental adaptability, broadening their application areas. This report systematically reviews the study advances of environmentally adaptive polysaccharide-based hydrogels (EAPHs), comprising anti-icing hydrogels, high temperature/dehydration resistant hydrogels, and acid/base/swelling deformation resistant hydrogels in recent years. First, the construction methods of EAPHs are presented, and the mechanisms and properties of freeze-resistant, high temperature/dehydration-resistant, and acid/base/swelling deformation-resistant adaptations are simply demonstrated. Meanwhile, the features of different strategies to prepare EAPHs as well as the strategies of simultaneously attaining multienvironmental adaptability are reviewed. Then, the applications of extreme EAPHs are summarized, and some meaningful works are well introduced. Finally, the issues and future outlooks of PH environment adaptation research are elucidated.