Strong Acid Enabled Comprehensive Training of Poly (Sodium Acrylate) Hydrogel Networks

The design of admirable hydrogel networks is of both practical and fundamental importance for diverse applications of hydrogels. Herein a general strategy of acid-assisted training is designed to enable multiple improvements of conventional poly (sodium acrylate) networks for hydrogels. Hydrophobic homogeneous crosslinked poly (sodium acrylate) hydrogels are prepared to verify the strategy. The multiple improvements of poly (sodium acrylate) networks are simply achieved by immersing the hydrogel networks into 4 M H₂SO₄ solutions. The introduced acids would induce transformation of poly (sodium acrylate) into poly (acrylic acid) at hydrogel surface, which constructs dynamic hydrogen bonding interactions to tighten the network. The acid-containing poly (sodium acrylate) hydrogels newly generate anti-swelling and self-healing performance, and show mechanical improvement. The internal poly (sodium acrylate) of the pristine acid-containing hydrogels is further fully transformed via acid-infiltration after following cyclic stretch/release training to significantly improve the mechanical performance. The Young's modulus, stress, and toughness of the fully-trained hydrogels are 187.6 times, 35.6 times, and 5.4 times enhanced, respectively. The polymeric networks retain isotropic in fully-trained hydrogels to ensure superior stretchability of 8.6. The acid-assisted training performance of the hydrogels can be reversibly recovered by NaOH neutralization. The acid-assisted training strategy here is general for poly (sodium acrylate) hydrogels.