Structural color hydrogels with lasting survivability are important for many applications, but they still lack anti-biodegradation capability. Thus, we herein present novel antibacterial structural color hydrogels by simply integrating silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) in situ into the hydrogel materials. Because the integrated AgNPs possessed wide and excellent antibacterial abilities, the structural color hydrogels could prevent bacterial adhesion, avoid hydrogel damage, and maintain their vivid structural colors during their application and storage. It was demonstrated that the AgNP-tagged poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) structural color hydrogels could retain their original thermal-responsive color transition even when the AgNP-free hydrogels were degraded by bacteria and that the AgNP-integrated self-healing structural color protein hydrogels could save their self-repairing property instead of being degraded by bacteria. These features indicated that the antibacterial structural color hydrogels could be amenable to a variety of practical biomedical applications.
Keywords: AgNPs; antibacterial; colloidal crystal; hydrogel; structural color.