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An autonomous self-healing hydrogel with high polydopamine content for improved tensile strength

  • Polymers & biopolymers
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Abstract

Biocompatible polydopamine–polyacrylamide (PDA–PAM) hydrogel has good self-healing performance. However, there is a trade-off between the self-healing ability and the mechanical strength. Excellent self-healing often results in the poor mechanical strength, which limits the application in load-bearing field. Here, we successfully prepare PDA–PAM hydrogels with improved strength and good self-healing properties simultaneously. By adjusting the pH and ammonium persulfate (APS) content of the hydrogel solution to promote dopamine (DA) polymerization, PDA–PAM hydrogel with a high content of polydopamine (PDA) is developed, which demonstrates excellent self-healing properties and mechanical strength. In particular, the PDA–PAM hydrogel with high PDA content (DA/AM = 5%) has a tensile strength of 16 kPa and the tensile strength spontaneously recovers 96% in 2 h after the tensile fracture. The obtained hydrogel also displays good biocompatibility.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFA0704104, 2018YFA0704103), NSFC (U1908233, 51775541, 11772086), NSFC of Liaoning Province (2019-KF-02-01).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Structural Analysis for Industrial Equipment, Department of Engineering Mechanics, Dalian University of Technology, Dalian, 116024, China

    Jinxin Huang, Wei Zhang, Heng Li, Xiaogang Yu, Shuaiwen Ding & Chengwei Wu

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  1. Jinxin Huang
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  2. Wei Zhang
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  3. Heng Li
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  4. Xiaogang Yu
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Contributions

JXH: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation, Investigation, Writing-original draft. HL: Cytotoxicity Test. XGY: Formal Analysis. SWD: Writing-original draft. WZ: Conceptualization, Funding Acquisition, Supervision, Project Administration. CWW: Conceptualization, Funding Acquisition, Supervision. All authors have given approval to the final version of the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Wei Zhang or Chengwei Wu.

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Huang, J., Zhang, W., Li, H. et al. An autonomous self-healing hydrogel with high polydopamine content for improved tensile strength. J Mater Sci 55, 17255–17265 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10853-020-05252-8

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