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An Additive Manufacturing Technique for the Facile and Rapid Fabrication of Hydrogel-based Micromachines with Magnetically Responsive Components
Published on: July 18, 2018
Microgel double-crosslinked hydrogel with excellent mechanical properties for flexible electronics.
Yongyan Mo1, Mingning Zhu2, Shuo Sun3
1Dongguan Key Laboratory of Interdisciplinary Science for Advanced Materials and Large-Scale Scientific Facilities, School of Physical Sciences, Great Bay University, Dongguan, Guangdong 523000, PR China; Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, Guangdong 518000, PR China.
This study developed advanced hydrogels using dual micro-crosslinkers for enhanced mechanical strength and conductivity. These materials show promise for flexible electronics and health monitoring applications.
Area of Science:
- Materials Science
- Polymer Chemistry
- Biomedical Engineering
Background:
- Hydrogels possess limited practical utility due to poor mechanical properties.
- Microgels (MGs) and active MGs improve hydrogel toughness through sacrificial bonding and chemical crosslinking, but synergistic multi-physical-chemical crosslinking is difficult.
- Developing robust hydrogels requires innovative crosslinking strategies.
Purpose of the Study:
- To synthesize pH-responsive soft microgels (MGs) as physical crosslinkers and vinyl-functionalized microgels (GMGs) as chemical crosslinkers.
- To investigate the mechanical properties of hydrogels created using different micro-crosslinking strategies.
- To explore the potential of conductive hydrogels for electronic applications.
Main Methods:
- Synthesized pH-responsive soft MGs (PEA-MAA-BDDA) and vinyl-functionalized MGs (GMGs).
- Prepared physically crosslinked hydrogels (MPC-xMG), chemically crosslinked hydrogels (MCC-yGMG), and dual micro-crosslinked hydrogels (MDC-xMG-yGMG) by dispersing MGs and GMGs in acrylamide (AAm).
- Incorporated carbon nanotubes (CNTs) to create conductive hydrogels and utilized long short-term memory (LSTM) neural networks for data analysis.
Main Results:
- Dual crosslinked MDC hydrogels demonstrated a synergistic enhancement in toughness and elasticity, exhibiting superior stretchability and fracture resistance.
- Mechanical properties were tunable by micro-crosslinker content, pH, and crosslinking strategy, influencing hydrogen bonding, interparticle interactions, and crosslinking density.
- Conductive hydrogels with CNTs showed excellent mechanical properties and ultralow hysteresis.
Conclusions:
- A programmable approach using pH-responsive dual micro-crosslinkers enables the design of mechanically robust hydrogels.
- The developed hydrogels are suitable for flexible electronic skin, human motion monitoring, and real-time blood pressure prediction.
- Synergistic physical-chemical crosslinking via dual micro-crosslinkers offers a promising route to overcome hydrogel limitations.
