Facile synthesis of self-healing and layered sodium alginate/polyacrylamide hydrogel promoted by dynamic hydrogen bond

Dingwei Zhao; Mi Feng; Ling Zhang; Bin He; Xinyan Chen; Jian Sun

doi:10.1016/j.carbpol.2020.117580

Facile synthesis of self-healing and layered sodium alginate/polyacrylamide hydrogel promoted by dynamic hydrogen bond

Carbohydr Polym. 2021 Mar 15:256:117580. doi: 10.1016/j.carbpol.2020.117580. Epub 2020 Dec 30.

Authors

Dingwei Zhao¹, Mi Feng¹, Ling Zhang², Bin He¹, Xinyan Chen¹, Jian Sun³

Affiliations

¹ Key Laboratory of Molecular Medicine and Biotherapy in the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, School of Life Sciences, Beijing Institute of Technology, No. 5, Zhongguancun South Street, Beijing 100081, PR China.
² Key Laboratory of Molecular Medicine and Biotherapy in the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, School of Life Sciences, Beijing Institute of Technology, No. 5, Zhongguancun South Street, Beijing 100081, PR China; Faculty of Light Industry and Chemical Engineering, Dalian Polytechnic University, Light Industry Court No. 1, Ganjingzi, Dalian 116034, PR China.
³ Key Laboratory of Molecular Medicine and Biotherapy in the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, School of Life Sciences, Beijing Institute of Technology, No. 5, Zhongguancun South Street, Beijing 100081, PR China; Advanced Research Institute of Multidisciplinary Science, Beijing Institute of Technology, No. 5, Zhongguancun South Street, Beijing 100081, PR China. Electronic address: jiansun@bit.edu.cn.

PMID: 33483074
DOI: 10.1016/j.carbpol.2020.117580

Abstract

Hydrogels are widely used in many fields but generally suffer from low mechanical strength and poor self-healing performance. Here, a novel and facile method was developed to prepare a semi-interpenetrating polymer network (semi-IPN) hydrogel with layered structure and improved properties based on sodium alginate (SA) and polyacrylamide (PAM). Systematic characterizations revealed a formation mechanism of layered structure via hydrogen bonds (HBs) promoted self-assembly of SA in the porous PAM matrix. Also, HBs can also display a key role in enhancing self-healing of the hydrogel, by which the hydrogel possesses a self-healing capacity of 99 % with sprayed by a few of water. Moreover, the layered semi-IPN structure makes the tensile strength of PAMSA hydrogel reach 266 kPa. The fabricated PAMSA hydrogel with layered microstructure containing SA provides a protocol to broaden the functionality and variety of the hydrogels.

Keywords: Hydrogel; Hydrogen bond; Self-healing; Semi-IPN.