A Composite Hydrogel with High Mechanical Strength, Fluorescence, and Degradable Behavior for Bone Tissue Engineering

Yanqin Wang; Yanan Xue; Jinghui Wang; Yaping Zhu; Yu Zhu; Xuehui Zhang; Jingwen Liao; Xiaona Li; Xiaogang Wu; Yi-Xian Qin; Weiyi Chen

doi:10.3390/polym11071112

A Composite Hydrogel with High Mechanical Strength, Fluorescence, and Degradable Behavior for Bone Tissue Engineering

Polymers (Basel). 2019 Jul 1;11(7):1112. doi: 10.3390/polym11071112.

Authors

Yanqin Wang^{1

2

3}, Yanan Xue^{4

5}, Jinghui Wang⁴, Yaping Zhu⁴, Yu Zhu⁴, Xuehui Zhang⁴, Jingwen Liao⁴, Xiaona Li⁴, Xiaogang Wu⁴, Yi-Xian Qin⁶, Weiyi Chen⁷

Affiliations

¹ College of biomedical engineering, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan 030024, China. wangyanqin@tyut.edu.cn.
² State Key Laboratory of Luminescent Materials and Devices, South China University of Technology, Guangzhou 510640, China. wangyanqin@tyut.edu.cn.
³ State Key Laboratory of Molecular Engineering of Polymers, Fudan University, Shanghai 200433, China. wangyanqin@tyut.edu.cn.
⁴ College of biomedical engineering, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan 030024, China.
⁵ Sixth Academy of China Aerospace Science & Industry Corporation, Hohhot 010010, China.
⁶ Department of Biomedical Engineering, State University of New York at Stony Brook, New York, NY 11794, USA.
⁷ College of biomedical engineering, Taiyuan University of Technology, Taiyuan 030024, China. chenweiyi@tyut.edu.cn.

Abstract

In this work, to obtain a novel composite hydrogel with high mechanical strength, fluorescence and degradable behavior for bone tissue engineering, we prepare a nanofiller and double-network (DN) structure co-enhanced carbon dots/hydroxyapatite/poly (vinyl alcohol) (CDs/HA/PVA) DN hydrogel. The composite hydrogels are fabricated by a combination of two fabrication techniques including chemical copolymerization and freezing‒thawing cycles, and further characterized by FTIR, XRD, etc. Additional investigations focus on the mechanical properties of the hydrogel with varying mass ratios of CDs to PVA, HA to PVA and different numbers of freezing/thawing cycles. The results show that the as-prepared CDs_3.0/HA_0.6/PVA DN₉ hydrogel has optimized compression properties (Compression strength = 3.462 MPa, Young's modulus = 4.5 kPa). This is mainly caused by the synergism effect of the nanofiller and chemical and physical co-crosslinking. The water content and swelling ratio of the CDs/HA/PVA SN and DN gels are also systematically investigated to reveal the relationship of their microstructural features and mechanical behavior. In addition, in vitro degradation tests of the CDs/HA/PVA DN hydrogel show that the DN hydrogels have a prominent degradable behavior. So, they have potential to be used as high-strength, self-tracing bone substitutes in the biomedical engineering field.

Keywords: degradable; double-network; fluorescence; hydrogel; mechanical strength.