Tough Engineering Hydrogels Based on Swelling–Freeze–Thaw Method for Artificial Cartilage

• DOI: 10.1021/acsami.2c02990
• Publication Date: 2022-05-24T02:40:50Z
• Authors: Mingming Hao; Yongfeng Wang; Lianhui Li; Yinhang Liu; Yuanyuan Bai; Weifan Zhou; Qifeng Lu; Fuqin Sun; Lili Li; Simin Feng; Wei Wei; Ting Zhang
• Keywords: Biocompatibility; Vinyl alcohol; Resilience

Articular cartilage, which exhibits toughness and ultralow friction even under high squeezing pressures, plays an important role in the daily movement of joints. However, joint soft tissue lesions or injuries caused by diseases, trauma, human functional decline are inevitable. Poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) hydrogels, have a water content compressive strength similar to those many tissues organs, potential replace tough connective tissues, including cartilage. currently, PVA hydrogels not suitable for complex dynamic environments lack rebound resilience, especially long-term multicycle mechanical loads. Inspired biological that exhibit increased after swelling, we report engineered hydrogel (TEHy) fabricated swelling freeze-thaw methods with (31 MPa), (1.17 MJ m-3), low coefficient (0.01), energy loss factor (0.22). Notably, TEHy remained remarkably resilient 100 000 cycles contact extrusion remains intact being compressed automobile weight approximately 1600 kg. The also exhibited excellent resistance (volume changes less than 5%). Moreover, skeletal muscle cells were able readily attach proliferate on surface TEHy-6, suggesting its outstanding biocompatibility. Overall, this strategy solves antifatigue stability problems large static loads (>10 N) provides avenue fabricate engineering strong antiswelling properties use as biomaterials engineering.