Rapid Synthesis of Robust Antibacterial and Biodegradable Hydrogels via Frontal Polymerization

Chitosan (CS) is widely used in biomedical hydrogels due to their similarity to extracellular matrix. However, the preparation method of CS-based hydrogel suffers the drawbacks of tedious operation, time-consuming and energy consumption. Thus, there is an urgent need to develop a rapid synthesis pathway towards hydrogels. In this work, we used a modified CS as a cross-linking agent and acrylic acid (AA) as monomer to prepare a hydrogel through frontal polymerization (FP), which facilitates a facile and rapid method achieved in several minutes. The occurrence of pure FP was confirmed via the frontal velocity and temperature profile measurement. In addition, the as-prepared hydrogel shows excellent mechanical strength up to 1.76 MPa, and the Young's modulus (ranging from 0.16 to 0.56 MPa) is comparable to human skin. The degradation mechanism is revealed by the micro-IR images through the distribution of the functional groups, which is attributed to the breakage of the ether bond. Moreover, the hydrogel exhibits excellent degradability, biocompatibility and antibacterial properties, offering great potentials in tissue engineering. We believe this work not only offers a facile and rapid FP method to fabricate a robust degradable hydrogel, but also provides an effective pathway for the investigation of the degradation mechanism at the chemical bond analysis level.